This thesis is a historical study of The Civil Servants Commission of 1965, which created The Public Civil Servant Reform of 1969. The salary and working conditions of the public civil servants had hitherto been determined by law, however the reform of 1969 introduced an agreement-based method and thereby reduced the need for future legislative action.
Previous studies into The Public Civil Servant Reform of 1969 have referred to this change as merely a formalization of existing conditions. This has, among others, been a recurring statement by the sociologists and labor-marked researchers such as Jesper Due and Jørgen Steen Madsen. However, the contents of this thesis have sought to expand this understanding by investigating the scope and ambitions set by the Civil Servants Commission of 1965 to determine, why it settled on an agreement-based method. Therefor the source material that this analysis primarily draws upon are the archives of The Civil Servants Commission located in the Danish National Archives, supported by the parliamentary debates along with selected entries from professional journals associated with the public civil servants.
This study concludes that the transition from a law-based system of implementing changes to salary and working conditions to an agreement-based system was part of a larger effort to incorporate the advantages of the collective bargaining system from the private sector, known as the Danish Model, into the Public Civil Servant System. This was considered a necessary change if The Public Civil Servant System was to continue as a viable method of employment in the Danish state.
But unlike the Danish Model, the new agreement-based system did not include access to collective action in case of disagreement between the public civil servants and state employers. Instead, legislative intervention was chosen as the primary way of solving a disagreement. This procedure was selected to prevent loss of parliamentary control over the state´s expenses and to maintain an orderly and trust-based relationship between state and civil servant. Though no conclusive evidence can be presented, it is suggested that the chairman of the commission had a particularly influential role in the design of the new agreement-based system by being extremely hesitant to include anything that could complicate the completion of The Public Civil Servant Reform of 1969.
Furthermore, the thesis goes on to discuss whether collective action was an acceptable option from the perspective of the politicians and whether collective action serves any beneficial purpose for the publicly employed.