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WORK PERMITS

What do we know about Denmark’s plans to relax work permit rules?

In the agreement which formed Denmark's new government, the three coalition parties agreed to “relax access to foreign labour for as long as unemployment is low", meaning easier work permits for skilled foreign labour. How much do we know about the plans?

Published: 16 January 2023 18:19 CET
People working at laptops
The government plans to make it easier for Danish companies to recruit abroad. Photo: Headway, Unsplash

In the coalition policy platform “Responsibility for Denmark“, the Social Democrats, Liberal (Venstre) and Moderate Parties agreed on three separate measures to make it easier for Danish companies to import skilled foreign labour:

  • making permanent the three-year agreement signed last year on easier international recruitment;
  • bringing in a new scheme through which so-called ‘certified companies’ can bring in lower wage labour;
  • providing extra funds to Agency for International Recruitment and Integration (SIRI) to speed up the processing of work permit cases. 

The agreement on strengthened international recruitment 

The Social Democrats struck an agreement with seven other political parties in June last year to temporarily loosen work permit requirements to “remedy the shortage of labour” and “support the Danish economy during the current
economic situation”. 

The scheme, which is is expected to be implemented later this year, will allow Danish companies to recruit up to 15,000 highly skilled workers internationally who can be paid as little as 375,000 Danish kronor annually over a period of three years. 

This salary threshold is much lower than for current international recruits, for whom the minimum salary threshold from January 1st this year is a hefty 465,000 Danish kronor. 

According to the agreement, the lower threshold will be automatically adjusted each year to keep pace with rising salaries. Under the deal, the scheme will only remain active so long as seasonally adjusted gross unemployment is below 3.75 per cent.

Residence and work permits obtained under the scheme have a duration of up to five years, but are conditional on the holder not receiving benefits under the Active Social Policy Act or the Integration Act, and also not committing any crimes serious enough to merit deportation. (If they do, then their residence permit ceases to be valid). 

Under the government deal, the idea is that this agreement will now be made permanent. 

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Bringing in a new scheme for ‘certified companies’

On top of the scheme agreed last year, the government plans to launch another scheme for companies which are certified by the Agency for International Recruitment and Integration (SIRI) to hire foreign workers under Denmark’s fast-track scheme. 

Under the scheme, the companies (see list here) will be given an annual quota for an as yet undecided number of international employees who can be recruited “with a lower salary threshold”. This scheme will be reevaluated after two years. 

Providing extra funds to speed up the processing of work permit cases 

The government agreement did not detail how much extra funding would go to the Agency for International Recruitment and Integration to speed up the processing of work permit cases and renewals. 

The parties agreed that funds would be allocated in the next budget (likely to be announced in August), which means anyone hoping for faster processing of their permit will probably have to wait until next year. 

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WORKING IN DENMARK

How will Denmark’s new rules on recording working hours affect you?

From July this year, all people working in Denmark will have to document any deviations from their agreed working hours. Here's how it's going to work.

Published: 13 May 2024 13:13 CEST
Updated: 13 May 2024 15:14 CEST
How will Denmark's new rules on recording working hours affect you?

On January 23rd, Denmark’s parliament voted through a law that, among other things, requires all Danish employers to introduce a working hours registration system that makes it possible to measure the daily working hours of each individual employee. 

The requirement, which comes into force on July 1st, implements a 2019 judgement of the EU Court, which stated that all member states needed to bring in laws requiring employers to record how many hours per week each employee is working.

The bill is built on an agreement reached on June 30th last year between the Confederation of Danish Employers, the Danish Trade Union Confederation, and Denmark’s white collar union, the Danish Confederation of Professional Associations. 

Will everyone working in Denmark now need to keep a detailed record of the hours they put in each day? 

No. Workers will only need to register any deviations from the working hours they have already agreed or been scheduled. So long as they stick to their scheduled hours, they never need to open the app, website, or other time registration system their organisation has set up. 

If they have to come in early for an interview, however, or do a bit of preparation for a meeting the next day in the evening, they will be expected to log those extra hours. 

Similarly, if they pop out for a dentist’s appointment, or to get a haircut, those reductions in working hours should all be noted down. 

What do employers need to do? 

All employers need to set up and maintain a detailed record of the actual hours worked by their employees, but the law gives them a lot of flexibility over how to do this, insisting only that the record be “objective, reliable and accessible”. 

They could do it in the old-fashioned way using a shared Excel spreadsheet, or, as most probably will, use an app such as Timetastic from the UK, ConnectTeam from the US, or Denmark’s zTime or Timelog.

To make it easier for their employees, employers can fill their scheduled hours into the time registration system in advance, so that workers only need to make a log of any deviations.  

Under the law, employers are required to keep these records for five years.

Employees empowered to set their own schedule — so called self-organisers — are exempt from the law, but as the law states that such people should be able to reorganise their own working time “in its entirety” and that this power should be enshrined in their contracts, this is only expected to apply to the most senior tier of executives. 

Who will be able to see my working hours? 

Each employee should only have access to their own data, which is covered by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and should not be able to see a detailed record of hours worked by their colleagues. 

Managers, however, will have access to the working hours records made by their subordinates. 

Will the legislation put limits on how many hours I can work? 

Yes, but in theory those hours already are limited for almost all employees by collective bargaining agreements. 

The new rule is intended to make sure that employees do not work more than 48 hours per week on average over a period of four months, the minimum standard under EU law, known as the 48-hour rule.

People in certain professions can, however, work longer than the 48-hours if they are covered by a so-called “opt-out”. 

Won’t it just be an additional hassle? 

The Danish Business Authority, the government agency which is supposed to support businesses in Denmark, estimates that keeping the time registration system up to date will only take between one to three minutes of employees’ time. 

In addition, it estimates that as much as 80 percent of employees in the country already keep a record of their time. 

Henrik Baagøe Fredelykke, a union official at Lego, said in an article on the website of the HK union, that he believed that the records could serve as an “eye-opener” about unrecorded overtime. 

What was crucial, he said, was that the system was used primarily to ensure that there was no systemic deviation from working hours and not to police employees. 

“It must not be used for monitoring by the management, who can come and say ‘whoa, why didn’t you work 7.4 hours yesterday?’,” Fredelykke said.

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