The red-green majority in the Storting, led by the Labor Party and the Center Party, has just adopted a working life experiment: Radical restrictions on the ability to hire labor from professional staffing agencies. For many, the Storting’s decision means that they will lose their jobs. What does the minister say when she is confronted with the reality many people now experience, who are dismissed from a permanent job? She serves up a fantasy that these will now easily get a new job somewhere else. Even though information the minister himself is aware of shows that it is not that simple. That is not the only thing Marte Mjøs Persen does. Confronted with the consequences in news’s Dagsrevyen on 1 January 2023, the Minister of Labor and Inclusion manages to make several claims that have no connection to reality. We are surprised that a minister in a Norwegian government can get down to this level. Let me take two of the claims Mjøs Persen makes. Firstly, she says that employees in staffing agencies receive lower wages than if they were directly employed by the company they are hired to. This is wrong. Persen itself administers the legislation that guarantees equal treatment of hired personnel, and the fact is that many employees in staffing companies earn better than the current tariff in the hiring company. The press knows or should know this. Just as well, she chooses to say the opposite. Secondly, she says that employees get a firmer connection to working life, if they have a permanent job in a hiring company instead of a staffing agency. It is also wrong. There is no difference between a permanent job and a permanent job, Marte Mjøs Persen. The distinction in Norwegian working life is between those who have a job and those who do not, and the consequence of Mjøs Persen’s policy is that more people are now in danger of being without a job. A final, more underlying premise for Mjøs Persen’s and the government’s ignorant working life experiment is that the Norwegian staffing industry and those hired from it are particularly covered by violations of the Working Environment Act. It is also wrong, something Mjøs Persen, who is responsible for the ministry and the Labor Inspectorate, should have had enough insight to know. The Norwegian staffing industry is thoroughly regulated and is also among the industries that have the most supervision from the Norwegian Labor Inspection Authority. We are happy about that, because the inspections also show that very few industries have as few deviations from the regulations as the staffing industry. Is this radical experiment in working life due to lack of knowledge? One might be tempted to think so. But the fact is that the government, the Minister for Employment and Inclusion and the majority in the Storting have not been without insight. The lack of analysis behind the proposals has been pointed out in various consultation rounds. Among other things, the State’s own rules council, which butchered the entire proposal that came from Mjøs Persen’s predecessor in the ministry. Mjøs Persen and the rest of the left have chosen not to listen to input and warnings. It will therefore be interesting how a government that is struggling with its popularity will allow itself to be influenced by what the reality will now be for ordinary working people: People, who today have a permanent job in a staffing agency, are forced to resign. Many were informed of this very thing, almost as a Christmas present from Marte Mjøs Persen and the Labor Party, and enter the new year with insecurity. Our estimates are that somewhere up to 10,000 people may lose what for them is a safe job. The insecurity these people now feel is a direct consequence of Marte Mjøs Persen’s working life experiment.
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Mjøs Persen’s working life experiment – Speech
