Documents Alsos, Kristin 12 results

"This report is the final publication from the Better Enforcement Through Improved Nordic–Baltic Cooperation (BETIC) project, funded by European Social Funds+. The project has brought together the Labour Inspectorates in the Baltic and Nordic states.

Free movement of services in the single market includes sending workers to provide services in another Member State on a temporary basis, also called posted work. Numerous regulations have been introduced both at EU level and nationally to protect the situation of posted workers, and at the same time to ensure that businesses and workers can move freely within the single market. The topic in this report is enforcement of regulations for posted work. Among the challenges for enforcement are inadequate cooperation between national authorities, limited cross-border cooperation and lack of effective sanctions."

"This article compares the policy and collective bargaining responses in the three Scandinavian countries to the cost-of-living crisis that began in 2021. The countries are known for their coordinated and consensual response to exogenous shocks. However, Scandinavian variants of neoliberal reforms, the 2009 Financial Crisis and, more recently, the COVID-19 pandemic have challenged the model. The comparative analysis finds three things. First, Norway and Sweden opted for rather generous measures compared with Denmark, and their measures were generally universal in nature, whereas the Danish measures were more targeted on specific groups. Second, with no statutory minimum wage, all three countries relied on collective bargaining to shore up wage incomes. Third, the different responses in the three countries pertain to different political and economic problem loads. We also find signs of convergence as wage solidarity seems to be experiencing a revitalisation in all three countries. This could have lasting effects on bargaining systems."

"The topic of statutory minimum wage has gained new relevance in the recent years, also at European level. Most European countries already have schemes for statutory minimum wage, while this has been an alien concept in the Nordic context. The report provides an overview of the designs and effects of such schemes, and of how minimum wages are determined in the Nordic countries and in the few other EU countries that still have no statutory minimum wage. The report also looks into factors that can explain the diverse views on statutory minimum wage regulation and why Nordic trade unions have offered resistance towards European initiatives in this area."

"The temporary work agency sector in Norway is diverse and growing. Since the EU enlargements of 2004 and 2007, it has also experienced a large influx of workers from the new EU Member States, especially in construction. This has led to more informal and undeclared business activities in the hiring industry. In this article we show some of the consequences of this development. We also discuss the impact of various national regulations in this sector and whether new EU regulation, namely the EU Directive on temporary agency work, might improve the situation. "

"This article examines wage regulation mechanisms, based on statutory provisions or on collective agreements, designed to protect migrant and posted workers from `wage dumping'. The Norwegian mixed model is compared to mechanisms in other European countries, and is also contrasted with the autonomous collective-agreement models of Denmark and Sweden. The experience gained from extension of collective agreements in Norway suggests that such mechanisms may be more generally effective as a means to protect foreign workers."

"In this article, we compare the evolution of industrial relations and collective wage regulation arrangements in the temporary agency industries of Sweden, Germany, Norway and the UK. Within a framework of institutionalization and institutional change, we examine how the strategic choices made by key actors, principally employers, confronted by market deregulation, EU enlargement and EU-level regulation, have affected the form and strength of collective regulation. We draw conclusions on the extent to which existing national institutional structures have been transferred to the industry, transformed or subjected to incremental change."

"There has been much recent attention to the upheavals, often externally induced, in collective bargaining and labour market regulation in southern European countries. In this article, we introduce a set of studies of changes, typically employer-driven, in collective wage regulation in northern Europe. We discuss possible drivers of change: contagion from southern Europe, regime competition among the northern countries themselves and/or destabilizing effects of east–north integration, driven by free movement. These drivers interact with internal change dynamics spurring diverging actor responses and institutional outcomes. We outline the common research design, review salient features of wage regulation in six countries, and differences in institutions, production, markets and factor mobility in four sectors. We briefly review findings from the other articles."