The Fictional Realm: Borgen's prime-ministerial heroine Birgitte Nyborg (Sidse Babett Knudsen) is consoled by her Machiavellian spin-doctor Kasper Juul (Pilou Asbaek) in the award-winning drama series from Danish public television. Until very recently one of the world's most progressive states (its current immigration reforms are insupportable!) Denmark is able to run active labour market policies such as "flexicurity" only because the Danish working-class still enjoys effective representation in the country's political system. Would it were so in New Zealand!
IF ONLY New Zealand’s politics could be like those of Borgen – the Danish television series.
Centred around the actions of a fictional Danish prime minister, Borgen’s politics are realistically
riveting. More than this, however, they are rational.
Denmark is portrayed as a nation with a conscience: the host of better angels
to which, in extremis, Borgen’s
heroine (yes, the prime minister is a woman) can successfully appeal. In the
fictional realm, at least, the Danes remain the sort of people New Zealanders
once believed themselves to be: decent, practical and courageous.
In population terms, Denmark and New Zealand are not that
far apart: 5.6 million to 4.6 million. They are also similar in possessing
large and efficient primary production sectors. Like New Zealand, Denmark’s
political history has been strongly influenced by social democracy, with both
countries boasting large and historically competitive Labour parties.
It is, therefore, unsurprising that left-wing intellectuals
and Labour politicians from New Zealand have, from time to time, turned to
Denmark for inspiration. In the late-1950s the left-wing political economist
and public servant, William B. Sutch, urged Walter Nash’s Second Labour
Government (1957-60) to follow the example of the small, highly-productive
nations of northern and western Europe by radically increasing the range and
complexity of New Zealand’s exports.
Excluding the political anomaly of the Rogernomics years
(1984-1990), Sutch’s blueprint, albeit much updated and amended, has remained
at the core of Labour’s economic thinking ever since.
Equally consistent has been the party’s predilection for
adapting Scandinavian solutions to New Zealand’s social problems. Until the
mass unemployment created by Roger Douglas’s free-market policies rendered the
whole subject moot, the David Lange-led Labour Government borrowed heavily from
the so-called “active labour market” regimes of the Scandinavian countries –
especially Sweden and Denmark. Under the rubric of Grant Robertson’s “Future of
Work Commission”, Labour is about to look northward again.
The Holy Grail? Grant Robertson's Future Of Work Commission looks set to make "flexicurity" an important part of Labour's 2017 manifesto.
Robertson’s
buzzword-de-jour is “flexicurity”. As the name of this highly successful
Danish policy suggests, the dual objective is to facilitate the maximum degree
of labour market flexibility while providing the maximum level of employment
security. Employers are offered considerable freedom to hire and fire, but, in
return, employees are generously supported through periods of unemployment, and
assisted with re-training and re-entering the labour market, by the state.
According to the official website of the Danish Government:
“Danes are positive about globalisation and do not fear losing their jobs. Rather
they seek opportunities for new and better jobs. This is partly ascribed to the
flexicurity model which promotes adaptability of employees and enterprises.”
Small wonder that Labour’s Future of Work website links
directly to this quintessentially Danish solution. In a New Zealand labour
market increasingly composed of “independent” contractors, people holding down
multiple jobs, part-timers, interns, and the plethora of similarly “precarious”
employment relationships, the Danes’ flexicurity policies must have appeared to
Grant Robertson in much the same way as the Holy Grail appeared to King Arthur.
Unfortunately, Robertson and his advisors failed to read the
small print. New Zealand and Denmark have many similarities, but in 2016 they
also feature a number of vital differences. In relation to flexicurity, the
most important of these is the respective level of union density.
As the official Danish website puts it: “The development of
the labour market owes much to the Danish collective bargaining model, which
has ensured extensive worker protection while taking changing production and
market conditions into account. The organisation rate for workers in Denmark is
approx. 75%.”
The organisation rate for New Zealand workers in 2014 was
approx. 19%.
It is typical of the contemporary New Zealand Labour Party
that it has simply ignored the profound contextual differences between the workers
of New Zealand and Denmark. With three-quarters of the workforce organised, the
Danish Confederation of Trade Unions is a force in the land. With fewer than
one in five New Zealand workers organised, the NZ Council of Trade Unions is in
no position to prevent flexicurity turning into a government-backed scheme for
employers to hire and fire at will. Presumably, the lone trade unionist on
Robertson’s “External Reference Group” pointed this out. Presumably, Robertson wasn’t
listening.
Borgen’s politics
are rational because the balance of social forces in Denmark obliges its
politicians to behave reasonably. Labour’s policies of 30 years ago
predetermined the future of work in New Zealand: flexibility without security.
This essay was
originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The
Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 15 January 2016.
