Offshoring of Danish Slaughter house jobs – Regional causes and effects for the Industrial Relations within the sector

Abstract

Increasing internationalisation of production is often cited as causing an erosion of IR-systems in the affluent countries and, in particular, the position of worker. However, macro-level evidence is often flawed or rather anecdotal. This article provides evidence based on an empirical case study of offshoring of Danish slaughterhouse jobs in particular to Germany as a consequence of increased international competition, that internationalisation of production can affect power relations at industry level. The article thus aims at contributing to the general knowledge on how increased economic internationalisation (often understood as globalisation or at least economic globalisation) together with increased competition affects industrial relations in general and workers’ position in particular, and how this contributes to the intensification of precarious employment especially in the German meat industry. The main findings conclude that even comparatively strong unions in a highly coordinated labour market like the Danish slaughterhouse workers union cannot prevent offshoring if the gains are clear and significant. However, Danish trade unions and the centralised and coordinated Danish IR-system have been able this far to wave off deteriorating working conditions like working hours as wells as any reductions in the wage level, but this has been at the expense of jobs. At least 1600 to 2000 Danish slaughterhouse jobs have been moved directly to Germany and Poland due to the lower labour costs. The offshoring has also had a significant impact on the rate of wild cat strikes in the Danish industry, which from a notoriously high level have been more or less eliminated. The changes in Danish industrial relations are partly explained by the development in the German slaughterhouse industry, where a widespread use of subcontracted EasternEuropean workers are eroding working conditions and pay levels. European legislation and rulings from European Court of Justice like Rüffert and Laval have highly influenced the shift towards the more precarious slaughterhouse work of East-European subcontracted workers. This article overall emphasises the increasing importance of European integration for both industrial relations and changing modes of production, which has often been neglected in the globalisation literature in favour of China and other low-wage Asian countries’ role in the changing international division of labour.