The scheme, which ensures full pay during sick leave, is under pressure. The employers, with NHO at the forefront, want to “turn over all stones” in order to reduce sickness absence. LO, for its part, wants to freeze sick pay for four new years.
On Thursday, the working parties once again sat down around the negotiating table. There, the topic is a renewed agreement on inclusive working life. NHO will not agree to a new IA agreement unless the trade union agrees to have all aspects of the sick pay scheme investigated.
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The problem is that both LO and NHO make ultimate demands that lock the fronts. It is part of the picture that NHO has managed to split the trade union movement on this issue. Namely, YS, Unio and the Academics have agreed to an investigation on NHO’s premises.
The backdrop is the fact that sickness absence has been increasing in recent years and is now at the highest level in 15 years. The latest figures from Statistics Norway tell us that sickness absence is an average of 7.1 per cent and represents over ten million lost working days a year.
The alternative is for LO to spearhead a strike.
Today’s sick pay scheme gives everyone full pay during illness for up to one year. The scheme came into force in the summer of 1978. It was then championed by the trade union movement, with LO at the forefront. Some occupational groups, mainly white-collar workers, had already negotiated full pay during sickness in their collective agreements. Most employees, on the other hand, had to manage without pay for one so-called qualifying day in case of sick leave.
But now there are political forces that want to go back 46 years in time and restore such a class divide. The program committee in Venstre is in favor of reducing sick pay to 80 per cent after six months’ absence. There are also forces in the Conservative Party that want to cut sick pay, and in the proposal for a new FRP program a review is announced to ensure a “more sustainable” sick pay scheme.
Against this background, it is perfectly understandable that LO will protect the sick pay scheme for four years, in order to prevent a possible bourgeois government in 2025 from cutting sick pay with the stroke of a pen. That is why it is so important to bring NHO to its knees now before Christmas. The alternative is for LO to spearhead a strike with the same theme in 2026.
It is necessary to find the fundamental reasons for the high sickness absence, preferably through an investigation. But it is a bad idea to penalize workers financially when they have to be away from work due to illness. You don’t get healthier because of that.
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