Contribution by the Communist Party in Denmark

Contribution by the Communist Party in Denmark
to the international meeting in Portugal the 5-6th July 2007      
 

Dear comrades,

First of all I want to thank the comrades from the Portuguese Communist Party for organizing this very important meeting.

We in the Communist Party in Denmark totally share your views on the importance of having an up-to-data analysis of what the EU is trying to implement for the next years.

Even though we for the moment don’t know what the future will be for the new EU-constitution, we know for sure, that the goals of the EU and for the capitalist powers in Europe and elsewhere are unchanged, that is to guarantee the highest profits for the capital.

One of the most important battlefields of the EU and capitalism all over is the battle taking place on the labour market. The capitalists want to exploit the workers to the outmost - and the workers try to get their part of the results of their own hard work.

In Denmark the organisation on the labour market differs from many other countries. This is a result of the battle between the Danish workers and their trade unions and parties in the last years of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th.

Back to 1899 the so-called ‘General Agreement’ became the result of a period of strong strikes by the trade unions met by lockouts from the employer’s side, violent intervention by the police, etc.
This general agreement has been revised from time to time, but it is still playing a very important role for what has later been known as ‘the Danish model’.

The agreement had 2 main sides:

On the one hand it accepted that the conditions on the labour market should be agreed on by the organisations on the 2 sides, that is the trade unions and the organisations of the employers, the capitalists.

On the other hand it was established that the employers should have the sole right to organise the work. The trade unions accepted that things like hiring and firing, working conditions and so on were mainly the employer’s domain. The wages and the working conditions in general should be fixed by agreements between the employers unions and the trade unions. 

For the period the agreement between the unions and the employers is running, their is an embargo on striking and lock-outs. To ensure that the embargo on strikes is followed, a so-called ‘labour court’ was established. This court has the power to impose fines to trade unions end employers, who do not follow the agreements.

As a result of this special organisation of the Danish labour market, the government and the parliament normally do not pass laws on the main topics concerning the labour market. So in Denmark we do not have legislation on minimum wages, on working hours, on holiday periods, on hiring and firing and so on - all this is normally decided in the so-called ‘free’ agreements between capital and workers. Three out of four wage earners are covered by a collective agreement, and these collective agreements set the standard for the rest of the labour market.

An important background for this development is that we in Denmark for many years have had a unified trade union movement. This means that the workers on the same workplace have been organised in different unions according to their trade, but not according to political or religious differences. Unfortunately this situation in the recent years have changed as cheaper unions, some of them Christian and others just profit-making, with some success have picked up workers who are not been able to see the importance of an active trade union, but are just seeking for a small trade union due.

The special Danish or Nordic model also includes another important aspect:

The social assistance systems have contrary to the labour market conditions always primarily been a question of legislation. It is the parliament that decides the rules on general pensions, on health care, on social assistance to victims of industrial injuries, etc. This means that the expenses in Denmark are paid by the taxes and not by the employers.

For assistance to the unemployed the situation was originally different. The trade unions took care of the unemployed by establishing unemployment funds. The members paid solitarily to the funds to the benefit of those who lost their job. Later on the trade unions won a fight for some state contribution to the unemployment funds - but as the backside of the medal came a still stronger state control of the unemployment benefits, on what the unemployed had to do to be allowed to receive unemployment benefits.
 
This was some general remarks on the Danish labour market.

But why is the so-called Danish model now by economists, politicians and journalists known by the artificial word ‘flexicurity’? And why is a strategy of creating flexicurity-like systems overall in the EU an important part of the so called Lisbon strategy?

The idea in the Danish so-called flexicurity is that you see 2 sides on the same time: the flexibility for the employers on the labour market, and on the other side the security for the workers in the case of unemployment, sickness and so on.

In Denmark it is easy to fire a worker. The collective agreements have decided that there shall normally be just a short time of notice before the firing of a worker can take place, and the employer is not due to pay any compensation. If a firm wants to fire a larger number of workers at the same time, they just have to discuss the situation with the trade unions, but this gives absolutely no guarantees. 

The other side is the security side. If you get fired or if you get sick you will receive compensation from the unemployment funds or the sickness insurance. The main part of the compensation will be paid by the state, that is the tax payers, mainly other working people.

This flexicurity system has for many years been to great pleasure for the employers as they are relieved from the burden of securing their own workers. If they give very hard and wearing or fatiguing working conditions, which results in worn-out workers who have to stop working - the public financed systems will pay. And if the employers fires workers if their profit is not as high as desired, again the taxpayers will pay.

But what we see in Denmark today - and especially in the last 5 years with a right wing government - is an undermining of the one side of the flexicurity - the security side. And this undermining is to a large degree inspired of or directly instructed by the EU. I will give you some examples:

Wages on the labour market were earlier almost always decided by the collective bargaining between the trade unions and the employers. That meant that workers having the same kind of job on the same working place got the same wages. But now this has changed. A system of so-called ‘individual’ wage negotiations has been introduced. This means that the employer and the individual employee shall negotiate about the wage, while the role of the trade union has become much smaller. And such negotiations can never be equal, as the individual worker does possess the power that the trade unions could have. The result is nothing but underpaid workers on the one side and a few lucky on the other. The holy EU-right of competition has been imposed to the labour class!

For the unemployed a system of activation has been established - a system that EU is looking forward to import. The Danish politicians describe the system as an active employment policy, which ensures that the unemployed are available for work.
The idea is that the unemployed can receive unemployment benefit - but they have to work for the benefit. So the unemployed are sent to poor jobs not covered by the collective agreements on the labour market. If such an activated worker gets sick or something other happens, the result can be a loss of the unemployment benefit. On the same time the period, where you can receive unemployment benefit, has been shortened down several times. More strict control of the unemployed has been introduced.
For unemployed who are not a member of the unemployment fund but is living on social assistance, the situation has become even worse, as the government very often has found new ways of reducing the social assistance. Especially brutal the government has been in cutting down social assistance to the immigrants. A result has been a rapid growth of real poverty in Denmark.
On the same time the system of activation has been abuse by the employers to get cheap labour. For the employer it is profitable to fire a normal paid worker and hire a cheaper worker on activation.

The EU has short time ago been the main factor for the opening of the labour markets in Western Europe for cheap unorganised labour from the Eastern parts of EU or from parts of the former Soviet Union. The directive on services was not adopted in exactly the form, that the capital wanted, but the battle has not ended. The cheap foreign workers impose very big problems to the trade unions as they undermine the wage conditions. It is therefore absolutely necessary to work hard to get these foreign workers to be members of the trade unions and to receive the normal wage in the trade. And on the other hand it is important to maintain the international solidarity and not accept any kind of discrimination of foreigners.

The public pension system still exists in Denmark, but is undermined by the introduction of so-called labour market pensions, where the workers and the employers pay money to pension funds. For those who are not so lucky always to be active on the labour market, a diminished public pension will be the sole source of existence. The EU-inspiration is clear!

In Denmark we have always seen education as something that should bring-up our children and youth to be free, democratic and broad educated. But now new legislation inspired by the EU has fixed, that one of the primary objective of the education system is to serve business. In the higher educational institutions professional businessmen are incorporated in the board of directors.

In Denmark the trade unions have as all over the world fought for shorter working week. In Denmark the result was a 37 hours working week. This has now been undermined by the EU directive on the right for the employers to impose flexible working weeks. For the employers it is valuable that they, supported by a new EU-directive now have the right to hire 2 refreshed part time workers in stead of one worn-out full time worker. The trade unions have been very active in trying to stop the EU-directive - but without luck.

This was just a few examples among many more.

In Denmark we have clearly seen that the security-side of the flexicurity now plays a much smaller role, while the flexibility side for the employers has been strengthened.

In a way, the Danish type of flexicurity works as a kind of contract between the state, the employers and the wage earners. And this is very dangerous for the working class as it very easily can lead to a weak and toothless trade union movement.

So for us it is not astonishing that the EU and the capitalists want to be inspired by the ‘Danish model’ and want to build up flexicurity systems. But we warn against this. The result will inevitable be, that the flexibility for the employers will be strong, but the security for the workers will be weak.

As we see it, the fight for maximum flexibility for the employers on the one side and the fight for more security for the working class on the other side is nothing but one of the current battlefields in the class struggle.

And the fight against the desire of the European capitalist’s to enlarge the power of their political and economical tool, the European Union, is another battlefield in the class struggle.

Only a strong trade union movement and strong communist parties will on the longer run be able to stop the attacks on the hard-won rights of the workers.

On the short run the fight against the 'reform treaty' of the EU is of central importance. We shall be active in a campaign showing the peoples, that the new treaty exactly as the one that fell in France and the Netherlands is aiming on a stronger centralisation in the EU, where the purpose is to facilitate the profit-creation for the big capitalist monopolies.

The main topic just now is to ensure that the future of the EU treaty should not be decided by the governments and the parliaments, but by the peoples in Europe by a public referendum. A campaign for a referendum in Denmark has already been launched.

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