Governing Labor: Transformations of Collective Bargaining in Denmark

This chapter analyzes the shifting arrays of Nordic labor market governance by exploring historical developments in relations between superordinate (master, capitalist, employer) and subordinate (journeyman, worker, employee). The chapter studies how these relations were formed and mediated through associative forms (guilds, journeymen’s associations, trade unions, employer organizations), and the role played by the state in the historical development of those associative forms. Here, associative governance is unfolded as shifting relations between associations in dual processes of bottom-up associating and top-down incorporating – through historical moments that form around common interests, and through the state’s quest to control those associations through incorporation. More specifically, three phases are reconstructed historically in terms of associative labor market governance: a slow decline of a traditional corporatist system, a negotiated rise of neocorporatism, and transformations toward anti-corporatism in contemporary times of neoliberalism.