Denmark
- initial thoughts about service user impact on social
dialogue in health and education
Nana Wesley Hansen & Mikkel Mailand
Employment Relations Research Centre, FAOS
Department of Sociology University of Copenhagen
Project meeting ‘New challenges for public services social dialogue’,
King’s College February 6, 2014
With financial support
from the European Union
VP/2013/0362
02-07-2016
Dias 1
1. (Very) general national context
Social dialogue and user involvement basics in the public sector
•
Well-developed social dialogue in all sectors with both collective
bargaining and employee invol. at sector, municipal and institutional level
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Formal Cooperation Committees at all three levels
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Trade union reps as employee reps in both bargaining and involvement
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Some pressure on employee involvement since public employers’ wants
to increase the management prerogative (management’s room for
manouvre), but empl. wants to revise rather than replace EI institutions
•
Public employers’ want (officially) more local-level collective bargaining
on wages. Local level bargaining on the teachers working time
abandoned CB round 2013. A trend?
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User-involvement spreading in many parts of the public sector
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The connection user-involvement – social dialogue has not been
researched previously?
02-07-2016
Dias 2
2. Health (hospitals)
How widespread is user involvement?
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User involvement is spreading and more and more attention is paid to it
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Application draft May 21 adopted: All or nearly hospitals have user
involvement trough bottom up channels (informal) and boards (usercouncils and maybe others boards, formal)
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User involvement in CB and employee involvement?
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Aims: to improve either 1) the single patient treatment process, 2) medical
research, 3) broader development of the health sector
Several forms of user involvement
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The individual forms difficult to separate from the treatment of the patient
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Traditional visits to patients (‘stuegang’, daily with one employee (doctor))
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New forms of visits to patients (‘den involverende stuegang’, weekly
meetings with patient including relatives and all relevant personnel)
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User councils
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Hospital
Boards and other formal channels?
02-07-2016
Dias 3
2. Health (hospitals)
Example of User Council 1: Glostrup sygehus
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12 users and 8 employee , chairman a director
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Users: Representatives from local patient union
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Competences: Consultative to the directors
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Meetings pr. year: 3
Example of User Council 2: Vejle sygehus
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12 users, 3 employees/middle managers, 1 directors, 1 cancer NGO-rep,
chairman a patient
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Users: Patients or relatives
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Competences: Consultative to the directors
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Meetings pr. year: 12
Important context
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Big, hierarchical workplaces, no dominant group of employees (doctors?)
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No major changes in SD institutions (big conflict + near broke union ´08)
02-07-2016
Dias 4
3. Education (schools)
How widespread is user involvement (users = parents?)
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User involvement is not new and might have reached its present high level
several years ago. User boards from 199?
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User involvement on all public schools (and likely in private schools too)
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Application draft May 21 adopted: All schools have user involvement trough
bottom up channels (informal) and parents councils (user-councils and
maybe others boards, formal)
•
User involvement in CB and employee involvement?
Different forms of user involvement
•
Parents Councils the hub
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Other informal and formal forms of user involvement
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Aims: To get the parents involved and to transfer tasks to them? L.B.
Andersen & R. Jensen (2001): It is the schools controlling/steering the
parents, not the other way around
02-07-2016
Dias 5
3. Education (schools)
Example of user involvement Vejle municipality
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Broad project on the innovative development of the future school (‘Skolen i
bevægelse’)
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Parents, pupils, employees included, but initially not the teachers union.
They forced themselves in later in the process
•
Not an example of user involvement changing social dialogue, but of social
dialogue been bypassed in relation to ‘new’ issues
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Will processes like this be found elsewhere?
Important context
•
Small-medium sized workplaces, non-hierarchical, one dominant group of
employees (teachers)
•
Major changes in SD institutions in ‘13 (mentioned above). Teachers unions
seen as hard-nosed and trouble-makers in some municipalities
02-07-2016
Dias 6