(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
These issues were central to the national meeting of the Fellesforbundet for a week ago and should force a fundamental debate far beyond the academic environments. It is really a debate about which society we want to live in.
Two descriptions
In this debate, two descriptions of Norwegian working life are drying up. One gives the working world a fresh message, where the examples of wage dumping are so few and insignificant that we do not have to worry about them. The other sees wage dumping as a cancer tumor that can cause great harm to Norwegian working and social life.
The first description is an example of an article in Dagens Næringsliv (10.10) by Sigrun Vågeng, director of labor policy in the NHO. You can read: "Unreasonable exploitation of employees or the use of undeclared labor represents the exception, not the rule in the serious Norwegian labor market."
The opposite picture
Representatives in hotels and restaurants, construction, transport and the offshore industry can present the opposite picture.
Within hotels and restaurants, the shop stewards are in a daily struggle to prevent total slippage in an industry where part-time and short-term work dominate.
The building associations in Oslo have for many years had two full-time shop stewards to monitor the unhealthy flora of sub- and sub-subcontractors who undermine both collective agreements and the companies that try to belong to "The serious working life".
Cheap drivers from Eastern Europe all today drive trailers registered in Germany or other EU countries for buttons and glossy pictures on Norwegian roads.
And in the offshore industry, NOPEF and OFS can report breaches of law, undermining the agreement structure and attempts at union crushing.
At the globalization conference at the end of October / beginning of November, one of the seminars will be about social dumping. Representatives from all over the country will meet there to exchange experiences and discuss countermeasures.
Confirmed on unexpected hold
This picture of working life has been confirmed unexpectedly in recent days. Last Monday, tax director Bjarne Hope and director of the Norwegian Labor Inspection Authority, Ivar Levereaas, came out with a fairly similar message.
Both believed that “it is unrealistic for the control authorities to uncover all illegal and undeclared labor, tax evasion and social dumping that may follow in the wake of EU enlargement;".
The Director of Taxes stated that the agency “is dependent on those who mediate labor being serious“, While the director of the Norwegian Labor Inspection Authority believed that the authority did not have the apparatus to assume greater responsibility for detecting social dumping – as the government seems to believe. (NTB 13.10)
Police director on the chopping block
On the same day, Police Director Killengren took it even harder when she spoke at the national meeting of the Commonwealth: EU enlargement to the east "may lead to greater nonsense in the Norwegian labor market“. She stated that “the threshold for paying undeclared work is getting lower and lower”And referred in particular to experiences in the construction industry, the engineering industry and the catering industry.
The effects can also spread to industries other than those affected today if exposure to competition and privatization take hold. Then the pressure on wages and working conditions can be great when the employers have to undercut each other to secure the contracts.
Or as the police director so precisely said at the national meeting of Fellesforbundet: “Increased unemployment and increased competition do not contribute to promoting serious working life."
NHO with wage dumping as a strategy?
According to NHO director Vågeng, wage costs are seven times higher in Norway than in the new EU states. The scales therefore state nicely: “Increased use of Eastern European subcontracts will therefore be interesting in parts of the business community – and for taxpayers."
This can only be understood as a green light from NHO for the wage dumping that can come from the east. It becomes even clearer when Vågseng concludes by claiming that the very best thing is that this “sharpens the competitiveness of Norwegian companies".
How wage dumping can sharpen the competitiveness of Norwegian companies without them themselves putting pressure on their own wage and working conditions, one must probably be an NHO director to understand.
It is just as difficult to understand how such a downward spiral can make wage dumping a rare exception to the rule. "in serious working life”To Vågseng.
