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 • Formal Cooperation Committees at all three levels • Trade union reps as employee reps in both bargaining and involvement • 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? • User-involvement spreading in many parts of the public sector • The connection user-involvement – social dialogue has not been researched previously? 02-07-2016 Dias 2 2. Health (hospitals) How widespread is user involvement? • User involvement is spreading and more and more attention is paid to it • 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) • User involvement in CB and employee involvement? • 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 • The individual forms difficult to separate from the treatment of the patient • Traditional visits to patients (‘stuegang’, daily with one employee (doctor)) • New forms of visits to patients (‘den involverende stuegang’, weekly meetings with patient including relatives and all relevant personnel) • User councils • Hospital Boards and other formal channels? 02-07-2016 Dias 3 2. Health (hospitals) Example of User Council 1: Glostrup sygehus • 12 users and 8 employee , chairman a director • Users: Representatives from local patient union • Competences: Consultative to the directors • Meetings pr. year: 3 Example of User Council 2: Vejle sygehus • 12 users, 3 employees/middle managers, 1 directors, 1 cancer NGO-rep, chairman a patient • Users: Patients or relatives • Competences: Consultative to the directors • Meetings pr. year: 12 Important context • Big, hierarchical workplaces, no dominant group of employees (doctors?) • 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?) • User involvement is not new and might have reached its present high level several years ago. User boards from 199? • User involvement on all public schools (and likely in private schools too) • 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 • Other informal and formal forms of user involvement • 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 • Broad project on the innovative development of the future school (‘Skolen i bevægelse’) • 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 • 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