Originally Posted by
CPH-Flyer
Yeah, I understand that two years is the norm. But going beyond two years is still about creating a longer term framework and stability in my view. In the pilots view it is all about loosing the right to strike. Showing yes, they have a strike culture IMHO.
It's not really a strike culture. To describe the system in Norway: We have a three party model: employers (represented through their association), employees (represented through their unions) and the government (mediating, and regulating). Strike is one tool that might be used. If you cannot strike, then you miss a tool in the negotiations. It is a tool even if you don't use it: you might use it, just as the employers have (and use) their equivalent: lock-out. There are some professions that legally cannot strike (military, police). For those, other professions in the same unions negotiate, and they get the same raise as their brethren. The pilots would not necessarily be in the same situation if they gave up their right to strike.
The three-party model has national negotiations, and a joint goal is stability and equality. Everyone gets more or less the same raise, working conditions are more or less similar etc. Industries (i.e. factories) negotiate first, then other private, then government/ public sector (including education and health care), following the example of the industries and getting more or less the same raise in percent. This usually is a smooth process. There might be a strike to make a point, but the government often stops the strike quickly by introducing enforced arbitration.
The problems come when someone tries to introduce elements from different ways of organizing the workplace: more individualistic, less secure and mot combatitive. That is not necessarily a worse way of organizing the workplace, but it is different, and it is problematic to attempt to use two different models, either in the same company or in a company operating in a local environment using a different model.