Tightens towards hired labor

before Jonas Gahr Støre and Minister of Labor and Social Inclusion Marte Mjøs Persen announce stricter rules for hired labor already this autumn.

– Entire permanent positions must be the norm in Norway, says Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre.

A number of proposals for austerity have been consulted:

• Prohibition on renting construction sites in Oslo, Viken and formerly Vestfold.
• Tightening throughout the country on the possibility of hiring from staffing companies.
• Employees’ rights are strengthened so that you get the right to permanent employment in the hiring business after two years.
• Documentation requirements to be able to hire labor, and stricter sanctions and consequences in the event of a breach are introduced.
• The legal boundary between hiring and contracting is tightened, in order to avoid hiring being “misclassified” as a contracting company.

Norwegian model

Now the government is easing the veil on what kind of austerity measures will be proposed. The government will introduce a so-called Norway model, which gathers measures that have been tried around different parts of the country to stop the use of hired workers, especially from countries in Eastern Europe, to the detriment of entire permanent positions in Norway.

Both the construction industry, the transport industry and a number of service industries have in recent years increased the use of hired temporary employees.

– In some parts of working life, the use of hired labor has spread, it is the workers who now pay the price for. That will now be the end of it, says Jonas Gahr Støre to TV 2.

LO leader Peggy Hessen Følsvik welcomes the austerity measures.

– We have been calling for this for many years, also vis-à-vis the previous government. Unnecessary hiring weakens the seriousness of working life and the rights of employees, she says.

Minister of Labor and Social Inclusion Marte Mjøs Persen promises speedy processing of new regulations.

– The goal is for the Storting to have new regulations considered before the summer, so that the measures can be adopted during the autumn, says Mjøs Persen.

– Guarantee

The leader of Agder Fagforening in Fellesforbundet, Christian Justnes, believes it is high time to tighten the use of hired.

– Permanent employees in their own business are a guarantee of seriousness and orderly conditions in the workplace. We often experience that the hired jobs are completely on the side of the working time rules in Norway, and often do not get paid extra for overtime.

He rejects that this will make construction work and transport more expensive.

– When you see the cost per hour, construction services are not more expensive than much else, such as legal services, repairs and the like. In addition, it has a positive effect on safety and quality that the work is performed by permanent employees, says Justnes.

In addition to measures against hiring, the government has announced several measures for a more serious working life this year:

• A statutory full-time norm. The case comes to the Storting before the summer.
• The general access to temporary employment will be removed on 1 July.
• Employers should no longer be able to circumvent the responsibility of employees by defining them as independent contractors.
• A Norwegian model with national seriousness requirements for all public procurement must be presented before the New Year.