Ad-PHS project’s workshop in Denmark
On Monday, December 7th, 2020, EASPD organized an online workshop to review the current state of PHS in Denmark as well as to share promising practices and connect various stakeholders.
To start off the workshop, Trine Pernille Larsen, Associate Professor and researcher at the FAOS research group of the University of Copenhagen, introduced the current dynamics of the PHS (sub)sector(s) in Denmark along with empirical examples of the eldercare and cleaning sector. Following that, Renaud Scheuer (EASPD) presented a review of the Denmark Country Report that was developed in light of the Ad-PHS project. Both presentations gave a vision on the national context, which fueled a discussion on overlap and differences with regards to the PHS situation in different areas of Denmark. Lastly, Aude Boisseuil (EFFE) provided an overview of guidelines on Professional Profiles and the need for Professionalization in the sector, with examples of the French PHS system.
Throughout the workshop, many key challenges were identified for the Danish PHS sector, including low wages, outsourcing and cutbacks in the sector, increasingly strict eligibility criteria for care, widespread undeclared work and health and safety issues and precarious working conditions. To respond to these challenges, public authorities are recommended to provide tools such as regulatory and policy initiatives, labour clauses, joint guidelines, collective agreements as well as the professionalization of the sector and social dialogue. Additionally, a need for more literature and promising practices was established, as well as a call for more partners and contacts for the Ad-PHS project. An initiative by Danish social partners for the international exchange of knowledge should be further encouraged. It will be interesting to see in the years to come which additional actions the Danish government and local social partners will take to tackle the PHS sector as an outlier in its otherwise well-regulated labour market.
