“HSH and HK Norway – SOCIAL DIALOG IN NORWEGIAN”
HSH, Employers Association in Commerce and services in Norway is organisation that exists for many years. As it is today it was formed 11 years ago. This association has 10 000 companies in its membership whose fee is 2,1% of annual bruto incomes.
At the same time most of the companies that are members of this association have the workers who are members of HK Norway, Commerce and Service’s Trade union. These two organisations have very good “enemy” relations for already many years. They co-operate on working collective agreements and 25% of commerce companies in the market have signed the agreements. They also work together on education and vocational training, child labour and tax politics.
Sture Artzen, president of HK Norway who is the most responsible person for continuos support for CTUBIH is a man with a charisma. It is not wonder that his union has a support and trust from so many commerce workers in Norway. For a year now HSH has been leaded by Kim Nordli, director for relations with trade unions.
These two organisations have been successfully conducted social dialog for many years.
These two men although daily fighting for salaries have visited BIH as true friends in order to find the possibilities for further support for FIET/UNI Project.
The situation on the labour market in this country is such that workers in commerce sector have not gone on strike since 1961 although their union, HK has a reserved fund for it. From this fund HK pays net salary for workers on strike (?)
This fund is at the same time, as far as we could see, the most important weapon for these two “opponent” organisations. The bigger fund, the powerful organisation!
Is there need to compare all this with the situation in BIH today when groups of strikers for all parts of Federation of BIH are daily protesting in front of Trade union building in Sarajevo?
No, this is not a fairy tale. This is real situation in not so far Norway. Luckily, CTUBIH is proud to be part of this big family.