Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-21T17:48:37.378Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

9 - Employers, Coordination, and Active Labor Market Policy in Postindustrial Denmark

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Cathie Jo Martin
Affiliation:
Boston University
Duane Swank
Affiliation:
Marquette University, Wisconsin
Get access

Summary

Introduction

In the Pantheon of European social experiments, Denmark has a privileged position. As a small open economy competing in increasingly hostile global markets, one might expect Denmark to sacrifice equality to sustain growth and employment, or to see unemployment soar due to dogged commitment to equality. Yet, it enjoys an extremely low rate of inequality and a very high GDP per capita. Danish workers receive high unemployment benefits – about 48 percent of previous earnings, compared with 24 percent in Germany, 12 percent in the United Kingdom, and 14 percent in the United States – yet unemployment is generally low. In 2009, Denmark had 6 percent unemployment – compared with 8 percent in Germany and the United Kingdom – and only 9 percent of total unemployment was considered “long-term,” compared with 45 percent in Germany and 25 percent in the United Kingdom. Granted, the country has experienced declining economic, employment and productivity growth rates since the global financial crisis; however, the economic malaise reflects problems associated with the neoliberal deregulation of housing mortgages rather than with social democratic investments in workers’ skills. It is too early to make predictions, yet from a comparative perspective, Denmark seems poised largely to persevere in addressing the skills and employment status of marginal workers.

Our puzzle is to ascertain how the Danes have sustained a commitment to social solidarity in the face of global pressures, neoliberal ideas, significant periods of right-party control, and the torments of life in the twenty-first century. With spiraling rates of unemployment and budgetary distress, Denmark was “on the edge of an abyss” in 1979, according to the Social Democratic Minister of Finance; subsequently, both bourgeois and social democratic coalition governments adopted neoliberal regulatory and social reforms, such as scaling back passive supports for the long-term unemployment. These changes led scholars to question whether Denmark would maintain universal welfare benefits, and similar pressures provoked Germany to protect core workers but largely to abandon the peripheral long-term unemployed. Yet, Danish policy makers struggled to keep everybody on the employment bus and a remarkable coalition for social solidarity defeated dualism.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Political Construction of Business Interests
Coordination, Growth, and Equality
, pp. 170 - 188
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×