By Süren Sündergaard
COPENHAGEN — After 36 hours of debate, the Danish parliament on May 7 passed a law to end to the 11-day private sector general strike.
The minority government led by the Social Democratic Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen claimed it was necessary to interfere in the conflict because chaos threatened. This was not true. The strikers had given all the necessary dispensations to maintain essential services.
The real reason was that the employers had been hit hard by the strike. At the same time, the strike was creating more and more support among the population for shorter working hours in the form of a sixth week of paid holiday. The employers were losing economically and politically.
The governing coalition, consisting of the Social Democrats and a small bourgeois party, negotiated with the main bourgeois parties, the Liberals and the Conservatives, to find a parliamentary majority for a law to stop the strike. Only the left-social democratic Socialistisk Folkeparti and the left-socialist Red-Green Alliance voted against the law.
The imposed settlement grants workers two extra holidays a year (including Christmas Eve, which 70% of workers already enjoy) and an extra three days for parents with children under 14. But these holidays apply only to workers who have been with the same employer for more than nine months, thus excluding many.
The law reduces the employers' contribution to the workers' pension scheme and withdraws a new sick leave levy on bosses. The new holidays are being paid for largely by the workers and the government.
The government's action has met with dissatisfaction from many workers. Many see it as an attack on the right to strike and are angry that it attempts to split the labour movement by undermining the unifying demand of six weeks' holiday for all.
On May 7, a protest meeting of more than 1000 shop stewards from all over the country was held. Proposals were raised for a national protest against the government's intervention and an extension of the strike to the public sector. While the proposals were greeted enthusiastically, the chairperson managed to avoid putting them to the vote. That day, 20,000 workers demonstrated outside parliament.
On May 11, while tens of thousands of workers remained on strike at many workplaces, most workers returned to work.
Partly, this was because workers felt that they had gained something from the conflict. But most importantly, there is no credible leadership able to lead a united fight for a better result. While the leaders of the trade union federation objected to the intervention, they are not prepared to lead an extra-parliamentary fight against a law made by a Social Democratic government.
Since the big strikes in 1985, the left wing of the trade union movement has been weakened in the workplaces and among shop stewards.
Though the fight is over for now, it has big consequences for the future. The demand for six weeks' holiday for all has become extremely popular and will be central when the public sector negotiates its contract next year. A new layer of workers have been involved in militancy, which may strengthen the trade union left.
Both the Danish and European bourgeoisie fear the government's intervention will influence how workers vote in the May 28 referendum on the Amsterdam Treaty, which replaces the Maastricht Treaty as the basis of the European Union.
[Süren Sündergaard is an MP in the Danish parliament representing the Red-Green Alliance. A version of this article appeared in International Viewpoint, the magazine of the Fourth International.]