High living standard

The reason why Danish living standard is so high because of their labor unions. When labor union movements started in Europe, they spread to Denmark as well but with two key differences. One was that they were super successful in organizing workers and the second one was that they decided not to take the path to communism. If we boil it down to the essentials these are the two key reasons for the high living standards in Denmark.

At it's high point, between 1973 and 1982 membership of all labor unions in the whole country was a bit over 2 million. That is, 2 million people in the whole country were members of some labor union. Just for the comparison, in 1980 Denmark had total population of 5.1 million people. I think that portrays the picture of just how strong the labor unions were.

To simplify it, that gave negotiating power to the unions. Their membership was high enough that they could mount a serious pressure on the employers. Because of that employers organized themselves in unions as well and the negotiations started. Through and because of this balance of power between union organizations and employer organizations virtually everything related to work, working conditions, maternity leave, vacations etc. at the start was exclusively negotiated between these two groups and politicians stayed away. And this is what the Danes proudly call "The Danish model". This model and its huge success from the end of the 19th century to mid 1980is brought the prosperity Denmark is enjoying today.

But Danish labor Unions didn't buy in on the labor union ideals all the way. They stopped short of communism. Which means that while they did ask for better working conditions and shorter hours they never questioned the employers right to delegate work tasks. So importance of the employers was acknowledged and respected.

But maybe Danish labor unions were too successful. From 2007 membership in the labor unions is in a steady decline. Could it be that young Danes forgot why do they live such good lives? Foreigners most likely don't since they weren't brought up in Denmark. But that is a story for another post. Important point to take from this one is that Denmark is a well off country because it adopted a model in which profits are more equally distributed. Where middle and lower middle class have high buying power and that is the thing that makes their economy run around. If it weren't for the labor unions and the collective mentality "we are all in this together" Denmark wouldn't be where it is today.