Documents Dølvik, Jon Erik 48 results

"The enlargements of the Single Market in 2004 and 2007, have fundamentally altered shipbuilding employers' production and staffing possibilities. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, Norwegian shipbuilders began to offshore hull production and outfitting to countries in central and eastern Europe (the CEE countries) and eventually acquired several Romanian yards. From 2004, Norwegian yards also hired large amounts of CEE workers through temporary agencies and subcontractors. Transforming the mode of production and staffing in the yards, this two-way mobility has been driven by opportunities to increase production, overcome labour shortages, reduce labour and production costs, and adjust more flexibly to fluctuations in markets and production. This enabled the shipbuilding industry to handle a boom in production of offshore supply ships and the ensuing bust after the oil price dived in 2014.
The shipyard industry is part of the Norwegian core industrial relations system, with strong trade unions and employers' associations. As wages and labour costs are among the highest in Europe, the yards' competitiveness depends on high quality and productivity.
The dual mobility and outsourcing of work has led to a dualisation of the workforce, and declining employment among local blue-collar workers. Due to numerous examples of inferior wages and conditions among the subcontracted CEE-workforce, the unions in 2008 won through with demands for extension of minimum terms in the collective agreement, fueling tension and legal strife between the social partners. Eventually further re-regulation and enforcement measures were enacted, strengthening the rights and remuneration of migrant workers.
Our overall findings suggest that the two-way mobility of production factors can generate gains both for western and eastern yards and workers. However, the dual mobility has contributed to erosion of the industry's national skill base and establishment of a flexible segment of migrant workers who are not incorporated in the model of organised labour relations, lacking institutional representation and voice.
Looking ahead, the ongoing turn towards the production of more technology-intensive ‘green' vessels will require upgrading of qualifications, calling for more investment in vocational training, skill formation and long-term recruitment."

"Key findings
In recent decades, European shipyards have offshored the production of hulls (the main body of the ship) and the installation of ships' equipment (outfitting) to eastern European countries with lower wages, while more and more of the work in western yards has been carried out by lower paid migrant workers from eastern Europe. This distinct pattern of ‘dual mobility' in shipbuilding has had mixed effects. On the positive side, western shipyards have benefitted from the supply of cheap hulls and flexible labour on lower wages, while most of the labour migrants are paid substantially higher wages than at home. The transfer of production and skills from western to eastern European shipyards has also contributed to a revitalisation of shipbuilding in these regions, preserving jobs and boosting competitiveness. On the negative side, dual mobility has also contributed to a reduction in recruitment and rising labour and skills shortages, along with fragmentation and dualisation of labour markets between directly employed staff and subcontracted workers, mainly migrants. Many of the latter have also experienced precarious working and living conditions, marked by high job and income insecurity, along with poor housing and working conditions.
To strengthen the gains and avoid the negative consequences, the following challenges need to be tackled:
– development of a coordinated European strategy for enhanced recruitment, vocational training and investment in workers' skills;
– upgrading of blue-collar work, along with better regulation of subcontracting to reduce the disparities in pay and conditions between internal and external labour;
– stricter enforcement of the EU Directives on adequate minimum wages in the European Union (22 October 2022), on temporary agency work (19 November 2008) and on the posting of workers in the framework of the provision of services (28 June 2018) to ensure equal pay for the same work in the same place;
– increased public support through European and national funding for research and development (R&D) and innovation, along with a comprehensive industrial strategy for the sector to advance the development of new technology and fossil-free fuel required to accelerate the sector's twin green and digital transition;
– more institutionalised and coordinated transnational labour market governance within the shipbuilding industry, especially at the yard level, to strengthen productivity and improve the working conditions of cross-border labour."

"Après la grande crise du début des années 1990, les pays nordiques ont réformé leur modèle et ont rapidement retrouvé la croissance. Champions de l'efficacité économique comme de l'équité dans les années 2000, ils ont également bien résisté à la crise économique après 2008. Ces deux crises étaient dues à des échecs en matière de politique économique et financière et non à un modèle social. Dans les années 1990, de grands changements ont été décidés pour coordonner les politiques économiques et les salaires, sauf au Danemark, où les dévaluations ont favorisé les exportations et donc la reprise économique. En consolidant leurs budgets et en redynamisant leur demande intérieure, les pays nordiques ont investi dans des politiques d'éducation et d'emploi pour préserver leur modèle social. Les politiques d'activation ont le plus souvent pu perdurer, à certaines conditions, le taux de chômage a plongé et les inégalités sont restées limitées. Fortement touchés par la crise de 2008, les pays nordiques ont pu poursuivre des politiques légèrement contra-cycliques et se redresser grâce aux réformes mises en œuvre avant la crise et à des finances publiques solides. Hors de la zone euro, la Suède et la Norvège ont, elles, tiré profit de dévaluations décidées dès le début de la crise. La Finlande et le Danemark ont subi des périodes de déclin plus importantes – le Danemark en raison de l'éclatement de sa bulle spéculative –, mais tous les pays nordiques, à l'exception de la Finlande, s'acheminaient vers une reprise en 2014. Cependant, une certaine instabilité politique, le vieillissement et la plus grande diversité de la population ainsi que la hausse du taux de chômage ont suscité de nouvelles incertitudes quant à la façon dont les pays nordiques devront adapter leur modèle social dans le futur."

"The Nordic countries have clear similarities. With their small, open economies, well-developed welfare states and organized working life, they have given us the term “the Nordic model”. NordMod 2030 is a Nordic research project analysing developments of the past 25 years and identifying the challenges that the Nordic countries will face in the years through 2030. This final report summarizes the insights and findings of the project's 17 subreports. It is intended to serve as a source of knowledge in debates over the renewal and further development of the Nordic model. The project was commissioned by SAMAK in cooperation with FEPS. "

"Provides a unique overview of social model developments in key European countries over the past 25 years
Gathers a selection of outstanding international scholars which offer a comprehensive view on the recent crisis and its background causes
Features case studies of 11 countries and comparative analysis of policy coalitions and labor market outcomes
This book analyzes the interaction of European social models the institutions structuring labor markets' supply side and their turbulent macroeconomic environment from the deep Europe-wide recession, ending Germanys post-unification boom, through monetary union's establishment, to the Great Recession following the recent financial crisis. The analysis reaches two conclusions challenging the dominant view that the social models caused unemployment by impairing labor markets' efficiency in the name of equity. First, the social models' employment and distributive effects are far outweighed by their macroeconomic environment, especially in the Eurozone, where its truncated structure of economic governance transformed the Great Recession into a sovereign debt crisis. Second, instead of a trade-off between efficiency and equity, the employment effects of counteracting markets tendency to generate inequality depends on the macroeconomic conditions under which it occurs and how it is done."

"This report reviews the main common traits and variations of the Nordic models of labour market regulation, how they were adjusted after the crises in the 1980-90s, and how recent labour market developments have faced the actors with new challenges. The Nordic labour markets are still marked by comparatively strong, encompassing unions and employer organizations, multilevel bargaining systems, and broad coordination of wage setting at sectoral or peak level, but declining union density, especially at the lower ends of the labour market, combined with growing low-wage competition and cross-border work, raise questions about the unions' ability to maintain collective agreement coverage and stem erosion of their local power bases. With higher unemployment in the wake of the crisis, easier exit opportunities for employers, and widening downward inequalities, the Nordic unions face diffi cult choices over how to bolster national wage fl oors. Views vary on whether they are still strong enough to rely solely on collective bargaining or whether they will need more state support to enforce and extend collective minimum wages to the sprawling fl ora of unorganized fi rms. While the latter view is adopted by Finnish, Icelandic and many Norwegian unions, the former view predominates among Danish and Swedish unions, and it remains to be seen how keen the employers' associations and the politicians will be to support union calls for shoring up the system."

"This article analyses the decision-making process leading to adoption of the Directive on Services in the Internal Market (2006/123/EC), focusing on the role of the European Parliament (EP) and the influence the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) obtained on the compromise outcome. It is widely assumed that organized labor is structurally disadvantaged in promoting worker interests in the EU decision-making machinery. The outcome of the Services Directive strife shows, however, that under the co-decision procedure, where Council decisions are reliant on negotiations and agreement with the EP, European trade unions can – under certain conditions – gain substantial political impact if they have a clear, joint strategy and manage to combine effective coalition-building inside the EU institutions and key Member States, with mobilisation of popular and parliamentarian forces at the national level."

"This article discusses how the actors in the internationally exposed sectors of four Nordic economies responded to the economic crisis of 2008. Though Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden are commonly viewed as similar countries, there are important variations in the regulation of workers' rights and the available measures of labour market adjustment such as short-time working and temporary lay-offs. We find that such differences produced significant differences in adjustment patterns, in the cooperation and influence of trade unions during these processes and in institutional adaptation. "

"This article analyses how the introduction of variable pay systems (VPS) has affected the role of trade unions and collective bargaining in company pay setting, and the role of these institutions in shaping VPS in Norwegian companies in blue-collar machinery production and white-collar banking services. The development of VPS has been fairly smoothly handled by the actors within, and with the help of, the established industrial relations institutions. In the machinery companies, VPS implied minimal changes in collective bargaining, whereas in banking significant individualization and more ambiguous effects for the role of company unions in pay setting were found. "