Job seekers
Decent working conditions
Future working life and Discrimination Tribunal
Red-green labour law
Snooping and payroll deductions
New commitments for 2022
Additional expectations
This article looks at six key ways in which labour law developments in 2021 will impact employment in 2022.
Many employers were reminded by a March 2021 Supreme Court decision that jobseekers are not obliged to state if they were dismissed by their previous employer.(1)
According to the Supreme Court, applicants themselves cannot mislead the employer, but they are not obliged to provide information that may negatively impact their application, provided that such information does not have direct negative implications for the employer. Given that Winter 2021 was marked by redundancies and compensation schemes, employers should be more proactive in the application process to find any potentially adverse information about the applicants.
The Supreme Court's 2 June 2021 ruling in the Grefsenhjemmet case clarified the controversial issue of repercussions of collective agreements: employers can no longer assume that rights arising from a collective agreement (ie, minimum wage and various supplements) cease to apply to employees, even if the collective agreement is terminated.(2)
Further, on 3 June 2021, the Labour Court ruled that even if seniority is to be understood as "continuous service time" in a main agreement, previous service time is also relevant in the assessment of objectivity relating to deviating from seniority (for further details please see "Seniority calculation – Labour Court judgment provides guidelines"). This is important for employers to note if they have employees who have previous periods of employment in the company and who are affected by temporary layoff or downsizing.
June 2021 was also marked by measures for decent working conditions when Parliament passed two laws. First, the law on combating work-related crime defines what is covered by the term "wage theft" and stipulates that:
- employers can be punished if they commit wage theft;
- managers can be punished if the company does not have an occupational pension scheme that is in line with the law's minimum requirements; and
- salaries can no longer be paid in cash (for further details please see "Government proposes new measures to combat work-related crime").
The second law to be passed was the Transparency Act, which requires reporting on matters relating to human rights and decent working conditions (for further details please see "The Transparency Act: fundamental human rights and decent working conditions"). Under this act, many companies have been given a new reporting obligation that must be incorporated into their systems and human resources department before it enters into force in Summer 2022.
Future working life and Discrimination Tribunal
The Fougner committee used the end of June 2021 to present its report on the "Norwegian Model" and the future of working life (for further details please see "Proposal adapts Norwegian Model to strengthen future working life"). The committee proposed to strengthen the rights of employees, including platform workers, and to place greater responsibility for risk on employers.
From 1 July 2021, the Discrimination Tribunal gained expanded competence (for further details please see "Alleged retaliation cases after whistleblowing may be processed in the Anti-discrimination Tribunal"). Employees can now go to the Discrimination Tribunal with claims for compensation and redress if they have been treated negatively in connection with having reported matters that are worthy of criticism.
Autumn 2021 saw the beginning of the "red-green" government (so called as it is a coalition comprising the Labour Party, the Socialist Left Party and the Centre Party). The government set several working life-related goals for the "Hurdal platform".(3) Some of the planned measures have already come into effect, including the collective right to bring an action, for which the government sent out consultation proposals in November 2021 (for further details please see "Government set to reintroduce collective right to bring actions").
This will give unions the opportunity to initiate legal action if they believe hiring rules have been infringed. The government has also submitted a bill to Parliament to remove the much-discussed general right to hire temporarily for up to 12 months.
Snooping and payroll deductions
In December 2021, the Supreme Court made several important labour law decisions. In one case, the Supreme Court concluded that it was legal to dismiss a healthcare worker who had snooped in a patient's medical record (for further details please see "Supreme Court rules that medical record snooping is reason for dismissal").
Shortly afterwards, the Supreme Court ruled that standard provisions on wage deductions do not normally give the employer the right to deduct employees' wages in order to correct previous erroneous payments (for further details please see "Wage deductions for incorrect payment: not easy according to Supreme Court"). After this ruling, employers must make specific assessments regarding whether they can deduct from an employee's wage payment if they had previously overpaid by mistake.
At the beginning of 2022, while the rest of Europe has been focused on the new notification rules in EU law, which came into force on 17 December (for further details please see "Companies should assess whistleblowing notification systems following EU directive"), Norwegian employers may be more concerned about the activity and reporting obligation in the Gender Equality and Discrimination Act (for further details please see "New requirements for companies' reporting on equality and non-discrimination in the workplace"). The law obliges employers to map and manage risks of discrimination and obstacles for gender equality; many companies will report on this for the first time for the financial year 2021.
It is likely that 2022 will also see:
- more concrete measures as a result of the "red-green" working life policy;
- the government's response to several of the proposals that were made in the Fougner committee's report and how these new rules and measures will be formulated; and
- potentially, the establishment of some home office rules that are adapted to working life after the covid-19 pandemic.
For further information on this topic please contact Ole Kristian Olsby or Lise Gran at Homble Olsby | Littler by telephone (+47 23 89 75 70) or email ([email protected] or [email protected]). The Homble Olsby | Littler website can be accessed at www.homble-olsby.no.
Endnotes
(1) Further information is available here.
(2) Further information is available here.
(3) Further information is available here.