The article studies the effects on wages of state intervention to extend collective bargaining agreements, a study complicated because extension is only used to a limited degree in the Nordic countries and not at all in Sweden, where “hängavtal” are regularly used in some sectors instead.
A “hängavtal” is a collective agreement with an employer who does not want to join an employers’ association. It is voluntary and commits the company to comply with the terms of the collective bargaining agreement.
The most interesting aspect of the article is that it highlights that the Nordic countries have chosen different paths to support wages in sectors where it is difficult to organise trade unions, and high immigration levels exacerbate wage pressure.
If further studies were conducted in this field, it would be interesting to evaluate the effectiveness of the different paths chosen by the Nordic countries, concentrating particularly on the potentially negative effects on organising workers of governments intervening to maintain wage levels instead of collective bargaining.