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WORKING IN NORWAY

Norwegian state and municipal employees get pay rise in new agreement

Three rounds of wage negotiations – for state workers, municipal employees, and Oslo Municipality as a separate tariff area – were all successfully concluded over the last three days as part of updated collective bargaining agreements.

Published: 1 May 2023 10:18 CEST
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All settlements in the Norwegian municipality and the state sectors were finalised well before the negotiation deadline. Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash

Collective wage settlement negotiations have been concluded for Norwegian state and municipal workers for 2023.

Collective bargaining agreements are used under the Norwegian labour system to regulate salaries and other working conditions. The settlements take the form of negotiation and agreements between trade unions and employer organisations.

Because 2023 is an interim settlement year, only salaries were negotiated in the most recent talks.

READ ALSO: EXPLAINED: What is a Norwegian collective bargaining agreement?

On Friday, an agreement was reached regarding the wages for state workers. On Saturday, worker and employer representatives also agreed on a wage hike for municipality employees.

Lastly, on Sunday, a framework for wage increases was also confirmed for Oslo Municipality workers, which fall under a separate union tariff area.

What can unionised state and municipality workers expect?

The framework for the wage increase for state employees ended at 5.2 percent, which unions later described as a big win.

“We got approval to lift the whole team, ensure equal pay, and reduce differences,” Egil André Aas, head of trade union confederation LO Stat, said in a press release.

On Saturday, the municipal wage settlement was also concluded, with a framework wage increase of 5.4 percent.

The employers’ organisation KS and the four negotiating union associations – the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO), the Confederation of Unions for Professionals (Unio), the Confederation of Vocational Unions (YS), and the Federation of Norwegian Professional Associations (Akademikerne) – were satisfied with the outcome.

Tor Arne Gangsø at KS said the solution gives a boost to both low-paid and highly-educated people.

“In the last three years, the state, hospitals and industry have had higher wage growth than the municipal sector. Therefore, KS has gone to great lengths this year to make up for some of this,” he said.

Separate talks for Oslo Municipality

Oslo Municipality is a separate tariff area and is not covered by the negotiations with KS.

However, on Sunday, all the unions – LO Kommune Oslo, Unio, YS and Akademikerne – were also able to reach an agreement on the wage settlement with Oslo Municipality.

The agreed increase mirrored the municipal wage settlement at 5.4 percent.

The agreements mean that all settlements in the municipality and the state sectors were finalised well before the negotiation deadline on the night of May 1st.

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WORKING IN NORWAY

Why overqualified foreigners in Norway struggle to find work

Norway is one of the worst countries in Europe when it comes to overqualified foreign labour being stuck in jobs that don’t make the best use of their skills, a new analysis has found. 

Published: 23 April 2024 11:38 CEST
Why overqualified foreigners in Norway struggle to find work

Norway is one of many European countries struggling with “brain waste”, which is where immigrants struggle to find suitable full-time work or are overqualified for their roles due to their education not being recognised. 

The findings are part of an investigation by Lighthouse Reports, the Financial Times, El País and Unbias The News that found that most European countries fail to provide good job opportunities to educated foreigners – potentially at the cost of their labour forces and economies. 

“While the results differ slightly between labour market outcomes, a consistent pattern emerges: immigrants lag behind natives everywhere, but brain waste is worst in Southern Europe, Norway, and Sweden,” the report read. 

Some of the metrics used to measure brain waste were the proportion of foreign residents who were overqualified for their role, underemployed (meaning they weren’t working as much as they could), or unemployed. 

In Norway, 27.6 percent of university-educated Norwegians were overqualified for their roles, according to the report. Meanwhile, just over half of the university-educated immigrant population were overqualified for their job. 

This figure made Norway one of the countries with the largest raw difference in the percentage of the native population being overqualified compared to the immigrant population. 

Furthermore, the number of immigrants who were underemployed, 3.9 percent, was more than double the rate of Norwegians in the same position. 

The investigation used figures from Eurostat between 2017 and 2022. 

Norway’s Directorate of Integration and Diversity has recently investigated the obstacles facing the country’s foreign population in the workplace. 

Its report found that immigrants faced barriers both when trying to progress their careers or simply trying to get their foot in the door. 

Immigrants working in Norway were also more likely to leave working life earlier or lose their jobs. 

READ ALSO: The biggest barriers foreigners in Norway face at work

Factors such as working in temp positions, physically taxing occupations, and industries exposed to economic turbulence contributed to this. 

However, a lack of Norwegian proficiency, a lack of relevant skills and poor health also played a part. 

Discrimination prevented immigrants from entering the workplace and affected those who were employed. 

“More and more people in the population have contact with immigrants in working life, and most experience that contact as mainly positive. At the same time, one in four immigrants has experienced discrimination in the workplace, and this discrimination can occur in different forms and in different working situations,” the report read.

The directorate also said that most companies didn’t have concrete measures to try and promote diversity.

One factor holding back immigrants in Norway was their Norwegian language skills, the report said. 

While Norwegian skills were moving in the right direction, less than half of foreigners in the country had advanced Norwegian language skills (level B2 according to the European framework) after completing language training.

Meanwhile, Lighthouse Reports’ investigation found that brain waste in Norway varied from profession to profession. For example, Norway was one of a number of countries where college-educated immigrants were more likely to be doctors. 

Immigrants with a university education in IT-related subjects were also far less likely to be overqualified. There, the difference between migrants being overqualified compared to natives was just 2 percent. 

However, physical and engineering science technicians, engineering professionals (excluding electrotechnology), and those who have studied education at a university level were the immigrant groups in Norway most likely to be overqualified. 

One thing to note is that immigrants who obtained their qualifications in Norway were far less likely to be overqualified than those who got their degrees outside of Norway, even if they still fared worse than natives overall. 

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