When the Danish government intervened in spring 1998 to end the major private sector industrial dispute, one of the elements of the settlement was the provision of additional days of holiday. Demands to extend this extra holiday will be a major feature in the forthcoming collective bargaining in the public sector in spring 1999. The first statements from the public sector bargaining parties, at congresses held in November 1998, indicate that a tough bargaining round can be expected.
Spring 1999 will see collective bargaining over the renewal of pay and conditions agreements covering some 600,000 local government employees and 200,000 central government employees. Bargaining will also occur in the agriculture and forestry sectors and in financial services. In total, bargaining in 1999 will involve around 1 million workers. Bargaining in the main private sector area, that covered by the two largest confederations, the Danish Federation of Trade Unions (Landsorganisationen i Danmark, LO) and the Danish Employers' Confederation (Dansk Arbejdsgiverforening, DA), took place in spring 1998. Bargaining in the DA/LO area resulted in a major industrial dispute, when union members rejected a joint mediation proposal for the entire bargaining area, which ended only when the government intervened to impose a settlement (DK9807178F).
The first statements by the bargaining parties in the public sector indicate a very tough bargaining round, which could very easily end with a breakdown in bargaining. The employee-side parties are the trade unions and their bargaining cartels, while the employers are represented by the counties' and municipalities' bargaining bodies, the Association of County Councils in Denmark (Amtsrådsforeningen, ARF) and the National Association of Local Authorities (Kommunernes Landsforening, KL), and the Minister of Finance.
Statements have, for example, been made at the public sector organisations' autumn congresses and at annual meetings of delegates, with speeches delivered by both the chief negotiators for the employees and the Minister of Finance, who conducts the bargaining on behalf of the central state. These speeches are used to outline the general framework for bargaining. The most important example was at the congress of the Danish Government Employees' Cartel (Statsansattes Kartel, StK) in Copenhagen on 11 and 12 November 1998. The president of StK is also the chair of Centralorganisationernes Fællesudvalg (CFU), the joint bargaining body of government employees, and consequently the chief negotiator for government employees.
The main issue facing public sector bargaining is that the settlement of 1998's collective bargaining in the DA/LO area ended with the introduction of minimum two extra days of annual holiday, as well as "care days" for workers with families - two days in the first year of the agreement and three days in the second year. This thus set the agenda for collective bargaining in 1999, as all organisations for employees in the public sector have the introduction of a sixth week of annual holiday as a principal demand, in addition to pay increases which secure real incomes.
The president of StK, Niels Juul, said at the organisation's congress that government employees were demanding neither more nor less than what had been introduced by the government when it intervened in the private sector. He assumed that this intervention was economically sound: otherwise, the government would surely not have introduced it. However, the Minister of Finance, Mogens Lykketoft, stated that, in particular in the light of the deteriorated economic situation as a consequence of the international trends towards crisis, there was no room for more holiday for employees in the public sector. On the contrary, there is an overall need for Danish people to work more if the good economic results since 1993, including a sharp rise in employment, are to be maintained.