Municipality gets 100,000 salary increase when it takes over – NRK Norway – Overview of news from different parts of the country

Alisada greets NRK with a smile in Opsalgemmet in Stovnar, northeast of Oslo. As she prepares to serve today’s lunch to the residents, the smell of delicious, freshly baked chocolate cake wafts from the oven.

– May 1 is Christmas Eve, in a sense. Almost everyone got a raise. As a healthcare worker, I earned NOK 100,000. He says that will never happen.

Alizada says she doesn’t buy expensive clothes or a new car.

– I will save for retirement or go on vacation, he says.

The 27-year-old cites better working conditions and pensions and less stress when the municipality took over the operation of Oppsalhjemmet, where he has worked since 2019.

Alizada enjoys helping the elderly with care, feeding and medication, and working with nurses. At the same time, increased wages provide increased motivation and can contribute to increased recruitment, he believes:

– There may be many people who want to study healthcare now. The aging wave is coming and we need to prepare.

Everyone got a raise

Alyzada previously told a local newspaper about the salary increase Our Oslo. A union shopkeeper at an old-age home, he meets NRK as the election campaign heats up.

Again, private and public hospital management is a hot potato.

When Oslo took over city council power in 2015, the city’s 14 nursing homes were run by commercial companies. Six of these are now re-run by municipal actors, while seven are run by non-profit actors. A nursing home is closed.

Now the union’s latest figures for six nursing homes show:

• All employees in the union have increased their wages.
• The annual salary of healthcare professionals has increased to between NOK 40,000 and NOK 140,000.
• On average, all healthcare workers have increased their annual salary to NOK 65,000.

With NRK, union leader Mette Nord and Minister of Health and Care Ingvild Kerkol (Ap) visited students and staff at Kuben High School in Oslo this week.

Håkon Rønningsbakken Da-Costa (20) from Nydalen and Thea Marie Beck (20) from Oppsal are now on their way to professional certification as health workers. She already has two years of experience in a nursing home.

None of them highlighted salary as important to their career choice. But Beck received a raise when the nursing home where he previously worked was re-municipalized.

– I worked privately for a long time. I earned very little then. Although I felt I was doing many of the jobs that skilled workers were doing, I was earning very little. After we became a municipality, I am earning a lot, he says.

Rønningsbakken Da-Costa wants to work as a porter.

– He says that even if he studies for four years, it is a very important job.

– A lot of material

Nord explains at the trade association that when municipalities take over functions, employees are transferred from a fee in the private sector to a municipal fee contract.

– That means most of them earn somewhere between NOK 40,000 and NOK 150,000, depending on their salary schedule, seniority and whether they have a professional certificate or not, LO Top tells NRK.

– Collective bargaining agreements in the private sector are worse than in the public sector, Nord says.

– Conservatives say they will demand competitive conditions if nursing homes are privatized again. Don’t you think what they say is true?

– Employers also have freedom of association in this country so they cannot be assured. What we’ve seen, Nord says, is that employers in the private sector choose the employer system that has the worst pay.

The public-private wage gap is wide in Oslo, a separate payment area, and wages in municipally-run nursing homes are somewhat higher in Oslo than in the rest of the country.

In the sunshine in front of Oslo City Hall, the Conservative Party’s city council leader candidate Erik Leigh Solberg can be happy about the civic majority in NRK’s ​​latest Oslo poll.

Private actors contribute to new thinking, mutual learning between the public and private sectors and well-being activities through football clubs and spas, he believes.

Leigh Solberg has this to say about the union’s wage statistics:

– I have no reason to doubt these numbers. As a handful of nursing homes in Oslo open up to competition, they underline why it’s important that we demand competitive wages and working conditions.

– But a salary increase of 140,000 for some, surely employees will love the municipal function?

– I see no reason why there should be any difference in pay conditions for private and public sector employees. Everyone has a need to attract labor.

– But how can you guarantee that if nursing homes are privatized again, they won’t get worse wage conditions?

– We will make requests for it. In recent years there has been a development in the EU so that these requirements can be set out in EEA law. There are no legal restrictions on this. It depends on political will, says Leigh Solberg.

He rejects the need for the Conservative Party to interfere in collective bargaining agreements:

– But when we bring services to competition and procure services, we can make demands for competitive wages and working conditions.

Lae Solberg warns that if the Capitalist election wins on September 11, the Conservative Party will remove 3-4 of Oslo’s approximately 40 nursing homes from the competition.

– Privatization

But getting a more skilled workforce into care isn’t just about pay.

Health Minister Ingvild Kjerkol (Ap) is now strengthening an initiative that looks at various initiatives to organize work in the care services of municipalities. An increased proportion of full-time employees and an increased proportion of skilled workers are also important goals Try.

Kerkol believes that privatization is not the way to go, and he asks voters based on what the Conservative Party has done when it has governed major Norwegian cities.

– The “record” of the Conservative Party is absolutely clear: they want to increase privatisation. When in power they privatize. He says working people will have to pay for it through lost pension rights and lower wages.

IN of Welfare Services Committee The report raises questions about wages and working conditions:

– The panel cannot conclude that employees of commercial suppliers as a whole have worse pay and working conditions than public sector employees in the same sectors, it says.

A number of elements are included in the concept of reason, pay and working conditions. But with regard to pay, the Committee says:

– Findings show that wages are on average 9 percent lower for commercial manufacturers overall compared to general manufacturers, but results vary between sectors.