Government employers in Sweden, Denmark and Norway: The use of power to control wage and employment conditions

Associate Professor from FAOS - Employment Relations Reseach Centre, Nana Wesley Hansen and her colleague Åsmund Arup Seip, from Fafo, Norway have contributed to the European Journal of Industrial Relations with the article 'Government employers in Sweden, Denmark and Norway: The use of power to control wage and employment conditions'. 

The article investigates how government employers exercise power in highly voluntarist bargaining models. In the article they analyse the potential power of public employers in Sweden, Denmark and Norway and examine how they use this potential. Their research calls attention to three areas in which government employers exercise power: direct political intervention, attempts to decentralize wage bargaining and control of wage movements. In the article Nana Wesley Hansen and Åsmund Arup Seip argue that government employers in the three countries have similar institutional capacities for power, but their ways of exercising power vary according to political norms and practice.

Nana Wesley Hansen, Government employers in Sweden, Denmark and Norway: The use of power to control wage and employment conditions in European Journal of Industrial Relations, May 2017.