News
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The Faroe Islands’ future must be more than fish
What will the Faroese live off when there is no more fish? Is the answer oil or tourism? The important thing is to create jobs for women in the archipelago which is more patriarchal than other parts of the Nordic region.
9 minutes
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Researchers: Employment has become more important than job content
Working life has been on the agenda during the Swedish general election campaign, and especially unemployment. More jobs are needed. Yet visions for the content of those jobs have not figured politically — an inconsistency highlighted by a group of researchers at a recent meeting in Stockholm.
5 minutes -
OECD: Wage cuts will not create jobs
Industrialised countries have reached the limit for how much wages can be cut. Since the start of the economic crisis, wages have fallen in real terms for half of all employees in OECD countries. Further cuts could be counter-productive and damage growth.
2 minutes
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Conflict over part time labour stops Swedish trains
A train strike in southern Sweden has put renewed focus on how competition for public contracts affects the rights of the contractors’ employees, and to which extent the procuring authority can interfere in their working and employment conditions.
5 minutes -
Iceland initiates a Nordic welfare watch
As part as its presidency of the Nordic Council of Ministers, Iceland has initiated a research project to look into the possibilities and interest for creating a Nordic welfare watch. Researchers in the Nordic countries will work together until 2016 to map how economic crisis influence welfare and how it can be made sustainable also…
4 minutes
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The Nordic model: From Reykjavik to Paris
“The Nordic countries need to stay on course. They will be an example to other countries, a reference point, particularly when it comes to the harmony between growth and really good social standards,” says Christian Kastrop, newly appointed Director for the Policy Studies Branch at the OECD’s economy department.
9 minutes
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What about the next 60? New report predicts continued success for the Nordic model
“We need to make adjustments going forward, but if we do we have every chance of succeeding,” says the Managing Director of the Research Institute of the Finnish Economy, Vesa Vihriälä. He is just finishing a report on the challenges facing the Nordic welfare model in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
4 minutes
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Agreement on main contractor liability stopped strike
A bit of history was written in the evening of 31 March when a new collective agreement was reached on main contractor liability within the Swedish construction industry. It prevented strike action with hours to spare and will see the employers’ organisation the Swedish Construction Federation (BI) establishing a fund to guarantee wages for subcontractors’…
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Unique judgement – managers guilty of employee’s suicide
In Sweden two managers at a social services centre were found guilty in February of causing an employee’s depression and suicide. The judgement is unique. Never before has an employer been found guilty of causing psychological illness, and regardless of whether it is overturned on appeal this judgement serves as a wake-up call for Swedish…
4 minutes -
Mikael Sjöberg new head of the Swedish Public Employment Service
The Swedish Public Employment Service has a new Director-General. Mikael Sjöberg comes from the post as Director-General at the Swedish Work Environment Authority. The Employment Service’s former head was fired in August last year.
1 minute