Over a three year period, with 8,500 checks, the Norwegian Labour Inspection Authority found 3,000 breaches of the rules for payment of overtime allowance.
Overtime payment is the most controlled area, and it is also one of the most frequently broken rules, showed an overview of the audit made by Dagens Næringsliv newspaper. There was a violation in 37% of the controls.
The companies most often fail to live up to agreements, and applications to the Norwegian Labour Inspection Authority for consent for the average calculation of working hours. Here, 57% of the controls were detected to be in error, but the number of controls was relatively modest: 603.
What is checked most often is whether the company has a continuous overview of how much each employee works. The audit carried out almost 26,000 controls, and revealed breaches in 13% of these.
‘The reason we find so many violations is that we choose to oversee industries, areas, and businesses, that we know have challenges. Working hours, along with wages, are the subject of many surveys where we are looking for social dumping and labour crime’, said Monica Seem, Director of the Labour Inspectorate (Arbeidstilsynet).
Almost every fourth employee in Norway is working shifts. Approximately one in six stated that they work at night during the course of a four-week period.
© NTB Scanpix / Norway Today
