The re-organization of work via digital labor platforms has introduced fully flexible work schedules in courier services such as food delivery. However, little is known about how working activity on such platforms may vary over time. This study examines the working time patterns of a full population of food delivery workers (N = 17,641) at the Danish food delivery platform Wolt over 6 years (2017-2022). It identifies three worker segments: Dabblers (few hours and short part-time over a few months), Temporaries(part-time for around 6 months), and Regulars (long part-time and full-time for 1-2 years). The results show that despite being a numerically smaller segment, Regulars increasingly perform the largest share of working hours. The article discusses implications of diversified working time patterns and uneven workloads across the three segments.

This special issue looks at the contributions of social dialogue and collective bargaining to creating, maintaining or reducing the risks associated with employment contracts of few hours, such as marginal part-time work, temporary agency work and zero-hour contracts. It additionally considers changes in welfare institutions with regard to the protection of these groups of workers. In this paper, we introduce the arguments on why and how working in marginal part-time jobs involves vulnerability, and on the differential roles collective bargaining and social protection may have on these jobs, depending in particular on which status (employees, workers or self-employed) they are associated to.

This paper offers a comparative perspective on the wage and working conditions of marginal part-time workers (less than 15 hours per week) in the Danish, Irish and Norwegian hotel and restaurant sector. Each of the three countries belongs to distinct industrial relations models with different sectoral traditions of multi-employer bargaining, political intervention and union strength. We focus on social partner initiatives, over time, covering trade unions, employers and national governments' unilateral, bipartite or tripartite measures to secure 'living hours' for workers with contracts of few hours. Analytically, we seek inspiration from the work on industrial relations regimes by Visser (2009) and combine it with the concept of living hours. We find that social partners have introduced a series of initiatives to secure living hours, notably to protect and increase hourly wages and secure guaranteed weekly working hours. However, while securing minimum wages and income through either bipartite, tripartite or unilateral measures seem relatively successful in all three countries, the attempts to guarantee minimum weekly working hours and thus secure living hours prove more difficult and mainly has had an impact in Denmark.

As part of the ILR Review's ongoing special series Novel Technologies at Work, this forum presents seven essays that collectively paint a global picture of the workplace regulatory state of artificial intelligence (AI). The first essay introduces the series by summarizing the challenges brought by the sudden deluge of workplace AI and the resulting scramble for a ''proper'' regulatory response. It then documents the US case and draws out themes from the subsequent essays, each of which is focused on a specific country or region. Collectively, the authors detail the distinctive ways that North American, South American, Asian, African, and European nations are directing the adoption and use of workplace AI, building legal regimes to regulate it, and carving out opportunities for worker voice and sometimes social partnership.

The entry of gig-platforms to labor markets world-wide has caused significant frictions with national institutions and regulators, including trade unions. In this article, we compare the interactions between taxi and food delivery platforms with the industrial relations (IR) systems of Denmark and Sweden, where we observe isolated instances of unions striking collective agreements with platforms. We assess and compare platform strategies and interactions with IR system agents, using an RIT-framework (rulemaker-intermediary-ruletaker) which considers how rulemaking capacity is allocated within the Nordic IR systems. We detect both IR system evasion and integration in Denmark and Sweden, with significant variation in causes and mechanisms. We find that IR system integration can be explained by public backlash, pressure from IR system insiders, and gaining first-mover advantages. Our findings shed light on integrative mechanisms of the Nordic IR systems allowing us to identify and discuss future challenges posed by the platform economy.

Has the Corona crisis triggered changes to Nordic social protection? We address this question by examining how Denmark, Finland, Norway, Finland, Iceland, and Sweden reacted to the crisis, which in many ways resembles a Litmus-test for Nordic social protection. Analytically, we draw on historical institutionalism, welfare, and segmentation literature. We find that although the Nordic relief packages aim to create an encompassing safety net, the reforms expose and sometimes reinforce institutionally embedded cracks in the Nordic systems around the nexus of standard and non-standard work, leading to potential layers of institutionally embedded inequalities. The Nordic countries have expanded and adjusted their existing social protection, portraying strong elements of path dependency, but with examples of novel initiatives. Their mix of universal and targeted measures appears to reflect so-called ‘expanded universalism’, where targeted measures supplement the ‘ordinary’ Nordic social protection to cover the most crisis ridden, but not necessarily the poorest, groups.

When the coronavirus spread globally in early 2020, many governments issued national lockdowns of schools, institutions, and businesses. As the epidemic turned into a pandemic, the health crisis also became a societal crisis, and many universities and research foundations issued COVID-19 grants to study the societal implications of the crisis. In this article, we discuss sociological research during the corona crisis and ask the questions: What role did sociology play in the pandemic – and how did the pandemic affect sociology? We argue that trends of a fast-track sociology can be observed, whichhas implications for methods, theory, analysis, and societal impact. Fast-track sociology is often faster, more interdisciplinary and dialogue-based, disseminates more preliminary results, and has potential of more societal impact. However, it also contains challenges if it is not interlinked with more critical and slower research processes, which are core to the sociological profession.

This article analyses the development of FinTech companies in relation to traditional banks in four countries: Denmark, Estonia, the Netherlands and Sweden. Based on approaches drawn from the sociology of markets and field theory, we analyse and theorize about empirical data from secondary sources, official documents and 38 interviews with key actors. Whereas digital technologies have been commonly depicted as a source of disruption for established business models, suggesting that the rise of FinTech leads to competitive upheaval in the financial sector, more recent studies argue that such interpretations are exaggerated. Here, we propose the emergence of a 'coopetitive' market ecosystem that combines co-operative and competitive connections between incumbents and challengers who often share the same infrastructure. FinTech firms are shown to function as catalysts in the transformation towards this ecosystem shaped by coopetitive interdependence between the actors.

A crisis refers to some sort of disruption of established practices, routines, or procedures occurring whenever a risk has been realized (Battistelli & Galantino 2019; Beck 1986, 2006). For social actors exposed to crisis in the labor market, this means that they will have to navigate some sort of uncertainty, trying to respond to the consequences unfolding in their surroundings as well as in their own activities (Aven & Renn 2009, p. 1). As they navigate a crisis, they will have to assess further vulnerabilities and damages for their own businesses and the variety of societal values that they adhere to, seeking out opportunities to manage both risks and prospects (Bundy et al. 2017). Doing so nevertheless is difficult and leaves social actors with a variety of tensions that they must address. Historically, researchers have linked the Nordic labor markets with strong social partners (employers’ associations, trade unions, and the state), able and willing to tackle such tensions. Due to high coverage by collective agreements and supportive welfare state arrangements, they have been able both to contribute to institutional stability and support adaption and changes (Alsos & Dølvik 2021; Andersen et al. 2014; Campbell et al. 2006; Kjellberg 2023). In the wake of, for instance, the recent COVID-19 crisis and the ongoing digital transformation of work, research as well as policy and public debates have nevertheless indicated that we may face new types of critical challenges in today’s society. It is important to point out that these challenges display a great variation. For instance, current crises often seem to be global in scale – for example, climate change, digitalization, and the coronavirus pandemic – making it difficult for national-level actors to handle the consequences on their own (Beck 2006). Also, some of the crises seem to have the character of a chock occurring at a specific point in time (e.g., a financial crisis, the pandemic), whereas others have been here for years and will last far into the future (e.g., climate change), although they might change gears on the way and interact with other types of crises (Björck 2016; Enggaard et al. 2023). In addition, the nature of these challenges has to do with the strategic choices of the social partners, and whether they, as actors in the labor market, perceive the crisis as controllable, and perhaps something that could be exploited to strengthen their position in the Nordic society or not (Boin & ‘t Hart 2022; Boin et al. 2008). These are all different conditions that play a role for Nordic social partners’ ability and willingness to act. We may ask ourselves in what way today’s crises and linked developments affect the Nordic labor markets and the Nordic social dialogue. Are the institutional foundations for adaption to various crises still able to provide means and measures to address future challenges in the Nordic countries? In this special issue, we address these questions, contributing to research on the future of Nordic working life during times of uncertainties by exploring the meaning and the impact of different types of crises and responses. The coronavirus pandemic constitutes a prominent crisis theme throughout this special issue, but the articles also address issues often framed as labor market crises due to digitalization and the emergence of platform work. The articles display a great diversity of both theoretical assumptions and empirical materials. The texts draw on different types of historical, comparative, quantitative, or qualitative data, revealing that the way we approach or conceptualize what we mean by a crisis is not self-evident. The articles are sensitive to the contextual differences, and the fact that involved actors and organizations in the Nordic labor markets face a variety of different risks and have different views of the crises they encounter. Authors of the articles thereby also recognize that most of the actors involved in managing the different crises in the Nordic labor markets differ when it comes to the amount of risk they are willing to take as they strive with different aims (Battistelli & Galantino 2019)

The regulatory setting and growing worker mobilization in the digital platform economy have recently attracted much political and academic attention. However, the perspective of platforms as employers and their role in regulating the online market are less researched. This article contributes with a fresh perspective on labour platforms as potential employers and their various strategies towards collective bargaining. Empirically, the article draws on in-depth case studies of three labour platforms operating in Denmark, but choosing very different strategies towards collective bargaining. The study identifies four factors impacting their choice of strategy: platform ownership, existing sector-level agreements, growth rates and customer base.

This paper presents a novel approach for studying differences and similarities among platform workers, by taking into account the wider labor market position of platform workers. Analytically, we seek inspiration from literature on labor market segmentation (SLM) and multiple jobholding (MJH) to nuance the often-dichotomized view of labor markets characterized by SLM theory. By using survey data from a set of additional questions tied to the Danish LFS, we apply latent class analysis models to discover patterns of labor market divisions among platform workers in Denmark. We identify three major groups of platform workers, and while all of them have multiple income sources, they have very different labor market positions in the traditional labor market. We categorize them as ‘established workers’, ‘transitional workers’, and ‘new labor market entrants’. These divisions point to marked differences among platform workers, implying that platform work is characterized by varying blends of labor market hybridity.

A crisis refers to some sort of disruption of established practices, routines, or procedures occurring whenever a risk has been realized (Battistelli & Galantino 2019; Beck 1986, 2006). For social actors exposed to crisis in the labor market, this means that they will have to navigate some sort of uncertainty, trying to respond to the consequences unfolding in their surroundings as well as in their own activities (Aven & Renn 2009, p. 1). As they navigate a crisis, they will have to assess further vulnerabilities and damages for their own businesses and the variety of societal values that they adhere to, seeking out opportunities to manage both risks and prospects (Bundy et al. 2017). Doing so nevertheless is difficult and leaves social actors with a variety of tensions that they must address. Historically, researchers have linked the Nordic labor markets with strong social partners (employers’ associations, trade unions, and the state), able and willing to tackle such tensions. Due to high coverage by collective agreements and supportive welfare state arrangements, they have been able both to contribute to institutional stability and support adaption and changes (Alsos & Dølvik 2021; Andersen et al. 2014; Campbell et al. 2006; Kjellberg 2023). In the wake of, for instance, the recent COVID-19 crisis and the ongoing digital transformation of work, research as well as policy and public debates have nevertheless indicated that we may face new types of critical challenges in today’s society. It is important to point out that these challenges display a great variation. For instance, current crises often seem to be global in scale – for example, climate change, digitalization, and the coronavirus pandemic – making it difficult for national-level actors to handle the consequences on their own (Beck 2006). Also, some of the crises seem to have the character of a chock occurring at a specific point in time (e.g., a financial crisis, the pandemic), whereas others have been here for years and will last far into the future (e.g., climate change), although they might change gears on the way and interact with other types of crises (Björck 2016; Enggaard et al. 2023). In addition, the nature of these challenges has to do with the strategic choices of the social partners,

Det danske arbejdsmarked har vist sig succesfuldt på en række områder med lav arbejdsløshed, voksende beskæftigelse og høj jobmobilitet. Dette skyldes ikke mindst den såkaldt danske flexicuritymodel. Imidlertid udvikler fleksibiliteten på arbejdsmarkedet sig, og der er meget der tyder på, at hyre/fyre-fleksibiliteten ikke får samme dominerende position på fremtidens arbejdsmarked. Siden årtusindeskiftet har der i Danmark været en stigende brug af atypisk beskæftigelse. I artiklen undersøger vi, hvordan kontraktfleksibiliteten, dvs. atypisk beskæftigelse i henhold til de tre parametre: beskæftigelsesstatus, kontraktens varighed og timetal, har udviklet sig i Danmark, og hvilke konsekvenser det har for beskæftigedes adgang til flexicuritymodellen. Analytisk tager vi afsæt i flexicurity- og segmenteringslitteraturen og trækker på data fra Arbejdskraftundersøgelsen og en ny survey med svar fra 3.120 atypisk beskæftigede på kanten af arbejdsmarkedet. Afslutningsvis diskuteres, om flexicuritymodellen kan tilpasses den voksende kontraktfleksibilitet på fremtidens arbejdsmarked.

This longitudinal study examined the labor market affiliations of marginal part-time workers (<15 working hours/week) compared with full-time workers (32–40 working hours/week) within gender and age groups. Analyses were based on 1,492,187 Danish employees with marginal part-time or full-time work at baseline using register data of working hours and labor market affiliation from the Labor Market Account. We used the Expected Labor Market Affiliation method within gender and age groups to estimate the time spent in different labor market states over a 5-year follow-up from 2012–2017. The multistate model included five recurrent labor market states: work, unemployment, long-term sickness absence, studying, and temporarily out, and the results were adjusted for education level, morbidity, and ethnicity. A marginal part-time worker generally had fewer days of work without social benefits and spent more days studying during follow-up compared with a full-time worker. In addition, marginal part-time workers ≥ 25 years old had more days of unemployment and more days of long-term sickness absence. These findings suggest that marginal part-time workers have fewer paid workdays without social benefits compared with full-time workers, depending on age. Further studies should explore whether marginal part-time work is a stepping stone into or out of the labor market.

The decentralisation of European collective bargaining has been subject to much research and IR modelling. However, these studies mainly focus on the implications for national and sectoral bargaining institutions and rarely include a company perspective. Based on cross-sectional representative survey data among managers and shop stewards in Denmark, this paper offers a fresh perspective on the recent decentralisation process. We explore if company-based bargaining structures are in place and whether local social partners have utilised these bargaining opportunities across distinct sectors after decades of decentralisation. Analyti-cally, we seek inspiration from Visser's (2016) distinct forms of organised decentralisation and combine these with insights from the broader literature on IR and institutional change. We find that bargaining practices and institutions at company level depend on a combination of provisions for company-based wage bargaining within individual sector agreements and strong union-affiliated workplace representation.

Although recent studies indicate that multiple jobholding is widespread in the digital platform economy, the interaction between people’s engagement with digital platforms and the conventional labour market is rarely explored. This article brings new insights into this interaction, exploring the income of individuals combining paid work in the conventional labour market with income from distinct digital platforms. Based on two large-scale representative surveys of a random sample of 18,000 people in 2017 and 2019 in combination with administrative register data, we demonstrate how labour and capital platforms attract different income groups. We also find that online income in combination with non-platform income sources such as traditional jobs exacerbate the segmentation tendencies found in the conventional labour market. An increasing share of rich and poor seem to use different platforms, indicating a potential hierarchy of labour market segments in both the online and the conventional labour markets.