The National Wage Board decides the outcome of a state strike. A decision won't be made until fall 2024.

It will be a long time before the National Salary Board decides whether educators will be allowed to have their own collective agreement with the government.

– If I am to be realistic, a decision will be made as soon as October, says the head of the National Salary Board, Magistrate Liv Sinnov Daraldsrut.

After the government intervened Compulsory Wage Board The Tribunal has to decide the conflict between the Government and the academicians:

• want Educators Can they still have their own collective agreement with the state and distribute the salary structure internally?
• Or should all employee organizations have only one common contract with the government? So I will LO And there is the state.

Unio agrees with academics and is still on strike. Taraldsrud illustrates the way forward.

– The first thing we do is to give the parties an opportunity to express themselves. Then the employee side is the first to speak. The employer is then allowed to respond. After that you go one more round. A decision will then be taken following a joint committee meeting, he says.

The Tribunal consists of three permanent neutral members with voting rights. Also, there are six permanent and specially appointed members from the parties. Each of these six has the right to vote for one person.

Thus a total of five members have voting rights.

Three can decide

In addition to Taraldsrud, law professor Bjørnar Borvik and researcher Erling Barth are neutral members. Barth was an economist.

– Neutral members, if they agree, always have a majority. There are examples of neutral members voting differently, but as a rule neutral members agree, says Tharaldsrud.

– What is the point of the union going on strike when a similar case is going on at the National Wage Board?

– What we need to remember is that there are two different issues.

– But aren't they striking for the same thing? To keep the collective agreement they have today?

– Yes, but they (Unio and State, editor's note) can still come to an agreement. Although the unions (Akademikern and Unio, editor's note) have the same content in their collective agreements, they are different negotiating parties to the state, board president Taraltsrud says.

Union strike continues

Meteorological Institute (MET) reports 51 employees will go on strike starting Wednesday, June 5. They are apart from the eight who were taken out on Monday.

Meteorologists' warnings are important for the transport of patients by helicopters and airplanes to oil platforms.

Crowe Lind, chairman at Unio Stadt, says many meteorologists dismiss the withdrawal as a deliberate move to trigger a forced wage board.

– No, not at all. Unio has a responsible strike shop. Now we have accelerated the withdrawal because we want to put even stronger pressure on the government so that we can get the state back to the negotiating table, he tells E24.

Lind says the government can easily call off the strike.

– The only thing they need to do is to extend the contract that Unio have done until 2022.

– Have you considered that a mandatory wage board would lead to an extension of the existing contract?

– We are not speculating about it, our goal is to get the state, now we need to know their arrival time. A large number of affected people demanded that the government stop the strike by extending the contract.

It's not about the crooner

Asmand Arup Seeb, senior researcher at FAFO Research Foundation, participated in the project Application of Compulsory Wage Board 2013-2023. He has written about the use of compulsory wage boards in earlier times.

– He says that the parties involved in the conflict should present their arguments in writing and orally

In the kroner and øre case, Seip says it is common for the tribunal to take as its starting point the latest sketch of the ombudsman for the disputing parties.

– If this outline is adopted by other bodies, he says, the tribunal usually bases its decisions on it.

But the conflict between the government and the academics continued Not about kroner and øre. At the heart of the dispute is whether Akademikärne and Unio should still have their own collective agreement with the state.

– What the decision of the National Wage Board will be is completely open, says Seeb. He will not predict the outcome.

Seip says it's “interesting” that the government only intervened against one of the striking organizations, and the union's strike continues.

– This is not common practice when using compulsory wage boards. It may involve a new procedure, he says.