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The first strike in Denmark takes place in 1794. The authorities crack down hard. 120 strikers are sentenced to 4 months of forced labor. In the 1870s, the young trade unions use the turnstile as a means of struggle. They strike against one master at a time. The unions gain more and more members and employers organize.
The first conflict in Denmark
The first strike in Danish history took place in Copenhagen in 1794. The Copenhagen master carpenter A. Hallandsen has refused to let two German journeymen leave when they ask him to. The two journeymen are arrested and sentenced to six days in prison on bread and water. As a result, between 200 and 300 journeymen carpenters decide to walk off the job in solidarity. The strike soon becomes about more than the two arrested carpenters. It’s about wage demands and better working conditions.
On August 5, Police Chief J. Th. Flindt tries to persuade the striking carpenters in Adelgade to give up the strike. He gets nothing out of it. He then deploys around 200 soldiers who arrest the carpenters who refuse to go back to work. They are about 120 German journeymen carpenters. They are taken to the Citadel, where they soon find themselves aboard the brig “Louge”, which sails out of Copenhagen harbor with three gunboats as escorts, heading for northern Germany. The authorities fear that the carpenters’ strike is a Danish counterpart to the French Revolution that took place five years earlier. This is most likely the reason why the authorities are cracking down so hard on the strike. The fact that other guilds are taking sympathy actions is a further incentive for the authorities to handle the situation the hard way.
On August 8, the strike is over. The 120 or so journeymen who still refuse to resume work are sentenced to four months of forced labor. However, the authorities decide to set up a commission, whose work results in a regulation in 1800 that regulates the contractual relationship between masters and journeymen. Although the ordinance contains advances for journeymen, it stipulates that it is forbidden to strike and maintains the guild rule.
The turnstile
In the 1870s, the trade union movement was established from scratch. Led by the skilled groups in the craft trades, local trade unions were formed. Their direct starting point is to improve wages and working conditions in individual companies. The means of struggle are “strikes”. Workers simply refuse to sell their labor by not working. During this period, the “social screw” is invented. The ’round-robin’ is the term for strikes that target one company. The strike spreads to other companies in the same trade as soon as what is demanded is achieved.
For example, journeymen carpenters go on strike at a local master craftsman to get more pay. They are then supported by their colleagues in the local area. Under favorable economic conditions, they gain an advantage over the master. When the master gives up the fight against the journeymen and bows to their demands, the journeymen move on to the next master. And so it goes on. Until the entire local area has achieved the results they want. It’s a form of decentralized union struggle.
As employers strengthen their organizations to resist the pressure, it accelerates the process of forming local joint organizations. For example, the journeymen carpenters will be able to get help from the other organized workers in their local area. The national union would be able to support the local struggles and ensure the necessary unity if the strikes were taken to a national level. In the 1880s, the foundation of the trade union movement was still fragile. The iron lockout in 1885 in Copenhagen shows this. The trade unions were weak.
Spontaneous strikes in the late 1800s
At the end of the 19th century, the number of strikes increased dramatically. They also became better organized than previous strikes. This is because throughout the 1880s and 1890s, it became more common for work stoppages to be pre-approved by the respective general assembly. Strike insurance in the form of strike boxes gained ground, and in Copenhagen in 1892, De sammenvirkende Fagforeninger adopted rules on planned strike support.
During this period, it also became more common to use picket lines and seek public support through press campaigns around major conflicts. Particularly strong action is taken against strikebreakers. And as unions gain ground, pressure is also put on workers who don’t want to be organized. The names of strikebreakers are published in trade journals and posted in local pubs. They refuse to work with them and the unorganized. The unions even go so far as to organize fellow workers in Sweden and Germany to prevent them from being used as scabs and wage squeezers. It was the unions of skilled workers who took the lead when it came to organizing and striking.
It wasn’t until the mid-1880s that the working men’s organizations began to assert themselves more strongly. A necessary condition for improving wages and working conditions. In 1898, the trade unions are united in De sammenvirkende Fagforbund. In 1900, DsF counted a total of 81,269 members. If you include the organizations that are not part of the union, the total number of organized members is 96,295 for the whole country. Therefore, around the 1900s, workers’ organizations were now a power factor of rank in relation to employers.
The struggle for the right to organize
In the mid-1880s, there were some slightly larger companies and also the beginnings of industrialization. But the general picture is characterized by relatively small companies with a predominantly artisanal production. This is where the machine manufacturers and masters in Copenhagen show what must have been the employers’ response to the emerging trade unions. The employers join forces and respond to wage pressure with the use of the lockout weapon. The lockout is the employers’ union’s weapon of choice against the social screw. This means that relatively small conflicts can quickly develop into large-scale lockouts. This is what happened in the iron industry in Copenhagen in 1885, where a long and bitter conflict began.
Initially, the iron manufacturers had no intention of accepting collective agreements with the skilled blacksmiths. Not to mention the unskilled laborers. The iron manufacturers’ goal is still the actual elimination of any kind of trade union movement. Even if the unions are defeated on the issue of wage improvements etc. the outcome of the lockout is still a kind of victory for the trade union movement.
The ironworkers are forced to enter into a collective agreement with the union. The unions’ right to organize and negotiate is thus effectively established: “…the workers’ right to be in whatever union they wanted to be.” The Iron Lockout of 1885 was probably the decisive battle for the right to organize. The Iron Lockout was the turning point in the struggle between workers and employers. The trade union movement is becoming a permanent institution in the labor market.
