“Work is what carries the welfare state,”
says Anniken Huitfeldt and adjusts the Labour Party’s slogan
‘More people in work’ to better fit today’s challenges: ‘More people
can do some work‘.
Norway is booming; employment figures are generally
high among women as well as men and unemployment is low. The Minister
of Labour will work to make sure sick people, the elderly and people
with disabilities can do some work even though they cannot work full
time.
“My European colleagues face a situation of high
youth unemployment and falling birth rates, very unlike what we’re
experiencing in Norway,” she says, and tells me she has given advice to
her colleagues and others.
“Use the economic crisis to prepare the ground for
a family friendly working life.” That was her advice when she recently
met Frances O’Grady, the first female General Secretary of the British
Trade Union Congress (TUC), the umbrella organisation for British trade
unions.
“This was also my message when I met several
government ministers at an OECD meeting: use this situation to
facilitate increased employment among women.”
Is a crisis and unemployment the right time for
this?
“This is what we did towards the end of the 1980s
and at the beginning of the 1990s. We faced major economic problems and
high interest rates, and many people were loosing their jobs. We
prioritised the building of nurseries and increased parental leave to
increase employment among women. This is where you find some of the
reasons for Norway’s current good economic situation, the fact that a
larger percentage of our population is in work,” says the social
democrat Anniken Huitfeldt, and continues:
“High unemployment, low retirement age and short
working lives eat up a lot of public budgets. If young people graduate
at 25 and retire on average at 59, like they do in Italy, and you also
have few women in work and we live for longer, then you have few people
of working age to carry public expenditure. This has a lot to do with
why so many countries are experiencing a crisis now. They have lowered
taxes to create growth which has not materialised, there are fewer
people in work and fewer to pay for welfare services. Work is what
carries the welfare state. Getting people to work for longer and
getting more women into working life is engaging everybody,” says the
Minister of Labour.
From youth politician to government minister
Anniken Huitfeldt fits the Scandinavian term
‘political broiler’ – a Scandinavian term for a politician reared for
office from an early age. She has held various leadership positions in
the Labour Party and its youth wing AUF since she became a local AUF
leader aged 16. She has grown up in and with the party and climbed the
grades in AUF and in the mother party one decade behind Prime Minister
Jens Stoltenberg. She has served as a minister in his governments since
2008: Minister of Children and Equality (2008-2009), Minister of
Culture (2009-2012) and now Minister of Labour.
As Minister of Labour Anniken Huitfeldt is
responsible for the government’s entire labour and welfare area. She
faces the challenges of increased globalised competition and a Europe
in economic crisis while having to secure good working conditions and a
safe welfare system for all Norwegian citizens.
“It might as well be called Minister of Labour and
Welfare, because in reality that’s what I am. The forerunner for this
ministry is the old Ministry of Social Affairs which is 100 years old
this year. Johan Castberg, our first Minister for Social Affairs,
helped create our employment protection legislation and the Castberger
children’s legislation which meant children born out of wedlock were
secured an inheritance and the right to carry their father’s name just
like children born from married parents.
“This happened after years of fighting the
political right. It is a proud tradition,” the politician adds.
Increased immigration and focus on social dumping
High employment rates and low unemployment has
meant Norway post EU enlargement has also seen high and rising labour
immigration. Polish building workers and cleaners, Swedish health
workers and not least Swedish youths in their thousands have in later
years come across the border to find work in Norway, the latter
especially in the service industry.
“Now more Danes are coming too,” says the Minister
as she keenly looks for the news story where she picked this fact up.
This is positive, we need the labour, she says.
Do you see the danger in the fact that labour
immigration is now increasing from European countries with high
unemployment?
“We want labour, but of course some of the work we
have done in later years has been focused on maintaining Norwegian
standards in working life as more workers wish to come to Norway.
That’s why we, together with trade unions and employers, have
introduced authentication schemes for the cleaning industry and in the
building trade to prevent labour from other countries and less than
serious companies undermining our working life standards. We have given
the Labour Inspection Authority an increased mandate to carry out
controls, so we are getting a better system which will secure that
companies keep to the standards they have committed to under Norwegian
law.”
The nightlife industry living dangerously
Where do you see the greatest challenges when it
comes to social dumping right now?
“We target trade after trade to develop precise
tools. Right now we are looking for less than serious players in the
nightlife industry. We have met the parties. They are focused on the
fact that the industry has access to a lot of cheap labour and that
there are some employers who are not playing by the rules. This is
where I want to focus our work together with employees’ and employers’
organisations.
“We introduced the Agency Workers Directive from 1
January. Its aim is to secure equal treatment of labour hired through
an agency so that all workers get the same wage and working conditions
across businesses.
“In order to maintain Norwegian workers’ standards
we need to make employees’ and employers’ organisations able to uphold
Norwegian employees‘ rights, so we have introduced a range of new
measures. One example is the joint liability for employers. This means
providers who choose to outsource services are responsible for making
sure salaries and working conditions follow Norwegian rules throughout
the supply chain.”
There’s an election this autumn. What else will
be your focus in the next six months?
Strong increase in mental health problems
“Firstly I want to focus on mental health issues
and working life. What we need now is a great drive to make it easier
for people suffering from mental health problems to take part in
working life. The number of people on sick leave is falling, but over
the past ten years sick leave has risen by 145 percent among people
where mental health is the cause. This is a strong increase. That’s why
helping people with mental health problems in working life and getting
people to do some work represent important goals.
“Graded sick leave, meaning people do some work,
has helped reduce the general absence due to illness. I want to achieve
the same for people with disabilities. Today 90 percent are registered
as 100 percent disable. No doubt many of those with disabilities can
work to an extent. It is important to get more people with reduced work
capacity into working life, and to have a working life which allows you
to do some work. The same goes for older workers.
“Two thirds of old age pensioners under 67 do work,
but often part time. So we need to make it easier to do some work.
That’s the most important thing, because work brings good health, work
keeps you healthy for longer, work keeps you young. So we need a
working life which to a greater extent makes it easier for people to
work a bit, whether you are ill, has partly reduced work capacity or
are an older worker.”
Strengthened youth guarantee
“Another important issue is all the young people
who don’t get a place in today’s working life. The number of young
people with disabilities outside of working life has remained steady in
recent years, but we need to make sure more of them are followed up at
an earlier stage. That’s why we have agreed on a new youth guarantee.
It means young people with reduced work capacity are followed up
quicker through targeted youth projects.”
OECD praises Norway in its report ‘Closing the Gender
Gap’, but underlines the fact that the country has a very gender
divided labour market.
Why is it so hard to improve gender divisions
in the work place?
“There have been enormous changes in several areas.
Theology, medicine and law were all very male dominated areas 30 years
ago. Now there are more women than men in all of these. To a large
extent it has to do with role models. We haven’t managed this well
enough in traditional female occupations. It is difficult to work with
areas where young people need to make a choice about jobs when they are
15 or 16 – an age when people tend to be very keen to express their own
gender through their choice of occupation and education.
“This is where the greatest challenge lies. We are
struggling here. People still make very traditional job choices in
occupational training. More untraditional choices were made 15 years
ago, but if the welfare state is to improve we need more men in
occupations where women are in a majority.”
Women who work part time loose out both in
terms of salary and pension points. It’s often called the gender trap
of our time. Why is it so impossible to achieve something
here?
“The number of women in work with children under 16
has increased a lot since we achieved full nursery cover, and the
number of women working part time has fallen. This proves that adapting
things for families with children does have an effect.”
Are you satisfied?
New pension system stimulates people to work more
“It is a choice for the individual, but we see that
the new pension system means benefits based on earnings have become
even more central than before, which again means it is of even greater
interest for women to be in work. We also see that the interest in full
time positions for instance among younger nurses is much greater than
among older nurses. Previously it was often the case that women who
started working combined house work and working life, while a new
generation of women have very different demands. Yet the largest change
in later years has happened to the man’s role. Surveys show men spend
far more time doing house work than they used to, they work less and
spend more time with their children than they did 20 years ago. So the
greatest changes are women work more and men work less.”
Yet it is still the case, is it not, that many
women who want to work more than part time struggle to get more
hours?
“Yes, and that’s why we presented a white paper
just before Christmas which would allow women to demand contracted
employment reflecting the number of hours they actually work.”
What is the greatest challenge when it comes to
gender equality in your view?
“We have made a lot of progress when it comes to
families. We have achieved full nursery cover, halved nursery fees, we
have one full year’s maternity leave and 12 weeks daddy leave. Now we
see there are great challenges in today’s working life. Some young
women experience sexual harassment at work, others aren’t allowed to
work the number of hours they want, and we have pay gaps. But the most
important reason for pay gaps is part time work and differences in pay
between the private and public sectors above a certain level of
employment. There is more equal pay in the public sector.”
What can you do about that?
“This is about moderation. We need the same level
of moderation in the private as in the public sector. We have
collective wage agreements in Norway. If we manage moderation we also
manage to be competitive, because of course it becomes a challenge to
compete internationally when we have a high salary level here in Norway
– the costs to industries exposed to competition make our goods too
expensive. That’s why it is everybody’s responsibility to secure
moderate wage agreements.”
If you had one choice, what would your priority
be?
“The full picture. This is the Ministry of the Full
Picture. It is important to contribute to working life and that more
people can do some work.”
