Danish Shipowners' Association
TRANSLATED VERSION
Annex 1
Description of the historical background for the development of the DIS act and the DIS Main Agree-
ment
1 June 2016
The parties in the maritime labour market that want to contribute to establishing and maintaining a strong
maritime industry in Denmark have, since 1997, had a formalised cooperation, which is currently consolidated
in the DIS Main Agreement of 28 February 2013.
The DIS Main Agreement
The first agreement on cooperation made was a direct follow-up on the recommendations of the so-called
"Funder Committee" in 1996 (Report no. 1312, March 1996
–
"A future for Danish shipping"). This commit-
tee, which had been established as a consequence of a Parliamentary debate in 1995, recommended that the
two sides of industry formulated a set of rules of the game to ensure that the collective agreements concluded
with foreign organisations were made at an "internationally acceptable level", while at the same time ensuring
that the Danish trade unions respected the shipowners' right to conclude collective agreements with foreign
organisations, thereby ensuring the competitiveness of Danish shipping.
The agreement was a charter stating that the shipowners would not conclude agreements below the inter-
national level and containing the shipowners' acceptance of the trade unions' possible presence during such
negotiations in order to "ensure" that the agreements met this condition. On the part of the shipowners, the
parties to the agreement were the Shipowners' Association of 1895 and the Shipowners' Association for Small
Ships (now merged into the Shipowners' Association of 2010) and the Danish Shipowners' Association, and
on the part of the wage earners, they were the Danish Association of Navigating Officers (now Danish
Maritime Officers), the Danish Engineers' Association, the Danish Radio Officers' Association of 1917, the
Danish Metalworkers' Association and the Semi-Skilled Workers' Union in Denmark (now 3F).
In October 2000, the parties renewed the agreement for a two-year period and, on the part of the wage earners,
the group was extended to include the National Danish Restaurant Trade Union (now 3F) and the Danish
Maritime Catering Union (now the Maritime Division of the Danish Metalworkers' Union). The new agree-
ment meant, inter alia, that regular meetings of the DIS Contact Committee were introduced, just as it con-
tained a number of obligations on the employer side, inter alia an action plan to "strengthen the maritime in-
dustry and the employment of Danish seafarers at an internationally competitive level". When the agreement
was about to be renewed, agreement was not reached with the SID (3F) and the National Danish Restaurant
Trade Union (RBF). Consequently, the new three-year agreement of 1 March 2002 did not include SID/RBF.
In connection with this agreement, a framework agreement was drawn up, which described in more detail the
minimum level to be included in collective agreements with foreign trade unions.
The peace and quiet that had been expected with a three-year agreement did, however, not become reality
since the International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF)
–
at the suggestion of the Danish Seamen's
Union/SID
–
adopted a resolution making it possible to declare ships registered in the Danish International
Register of Shipping as ships flying a so-called flag of convenience (FOC).