ABSTRACT
Since 1987, as a result of efforts to improve public sector performance, pay bargaining in the Danish public sector has been decentralized. Successive governments and public sector employers have long argued for the necessity for major changes if they are to be able to continue to provide services and develop new ones. In this process the focus is mainly on a rationalization of the system of collective agreements (cf.Udvalget om stØrre fleksibilitet i det offentlige aftale- og overenskomstsystem, 1988, p. 15). The demand for long-term structural adjustments was accompanied by demands for increased short-term flexibility, which focused attention on the pay system. Barriers to renewal, such as automatic mechanisms for pay increases and the lack of flexibility in pay structures introduced decades ago, have been identified as key problems in the change process. Employers would like to be able to encourage employees doing a particularly valuable job, and this has mainly resulted in demands for increasing the individualization of the pay system. Commentators have interpreted this as part of the general attack on (public sector) trade unionism, describing the new initiatives as a sign of ideological instability. Employers’ pressure and increasingly tighter public budgets make shared norms and the social order more difficult to maintain, and the potential undermining of responsible attitudes which have hitherto characterized pay bargaining could create scope for new conflicts in the sector. The risk of Balkanization and possible trade union rivalry, similar to that described by Jonsson (1992, p. 200) in the Swedish case, could in this respect appear as a negative scenario.
