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WORKING IN DENMARK

Danish municipalities launch recommendations for more foreign workers in welfare jobs

The national organisation for Denmark’s municipalities, Kommunernes Landsforening (KL), has issued an 11-point action plans as it urges the government to take steps to fill welfare sector vacancies with staff from abroad.

Published: 8 November 2023 15:38 CET
Danish municipalities launch recommendations for more foreign workers in welfare jobs
The head of the national organisation for Denmark's municipalities has issued a plea for government action to recruit from abroad to fill labour gaps in the welfare sector. Photo: Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau Scanpix

In a statement issued on its website on Monday, KL said its 11 proposals would increase the supply of foreign workers it says is needed to resolve a labour shortage in the welfare sector, which comes largely under the administration of local authorities.

“In a situation where we are set to be in need of tens of thousands of staff, it is absolutely essential to get more competent and motivated foreigners to work in Denmark,” KL chairperson Martin Damm said in the statement.

According to the organisation’s statement, the social care sector alone will be short of 16,000 workers by 2030.

That means action is required now, KL argues as it puts 11 specific proposal on the table it believes will help address the issue.

“If we are to be able to deliver decent, caring and compassionate welfare care to the public, we need enough staff. It’s that simple,” Damm said.

The foreign workers are needed “in a situation where we lack tens of thousands of staff at our nursing homes, schools, kindergartens and residential facilities,” he said.

The 11 specific points in the proposal relate to attracting, integrating and retaining the foreign staff at Danish welfare sector jobs.

For example, KL wants the Positive List, a scheme through which work permits can be granted to applicants in in-demand skilled professions, should better reflect the needs of the welfare sector.

The organisation also wants the right to Danish language lessons to be extended and that the course count towards accrual of permanent residency rights.

It also wants more flexibility around training and working in English — for example, in less public-facing roles — and general streamlinign of bureaucratic processes.

READ ALSO: Denmark cuts back on ‘positive list’ of jobs eligible for work permits

“Bureaucracy and rigid rules should not come in the way” of getting appropriately skilled workers into jobs, Damm said.

The KL leader urged the government to take note of the proposal and act on the issue.

“We are ready to take responsibility at municipalities and we already have valuable experience at attracting international staff in many places,” he said.

“But we also need [parliament] to take the bull by the horns and set concrete measures in motion as soon as possible,” he said.

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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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