I've lived in Norway for the past six years and moved from Oslo to Bergen (second largest city in the country) about a year and a half ago. While I've had two good, solid jobs in Oslo (and had no trouble finding or getting them), it took me quite some time to find a job here. I found one four months ago, and liked it. It's an IT job, similar to the ones I had in Oslo, at an interesting internationally operating company. So I was happy, motivated, and figured I'd be in a good place for at least the coming few years.
Now, in just two days, I found out that:
1) Through some sneaky loophole in the law they've limited my vacation days to 21 instead of the 25 that are given to full-time employees by pretty much every IT (or other) company in the country, including the ones I worked at in Oslo. Which means I won't be able to visit my family in The Netherlands during the December holiday season.
2) I'm expected to work overtime when necessary, without getting any type of compensation for it -- I don't get extra pay, and I don't get the option to save up the extra hours I work and use them as time off at a later date -- which goes completely against any work experience I've had and /or heard about since I moved here. In addition to this I witnessed one of my colleagues getting called into our managers office, getting yelled at and basically being intimidated into working overtime after he had said he couldn't because he was moving into a new apartment...
My contract has sections on both these subjects, of course, but both merely state that they're dealt with "according to the law", and you'd have to be a freaking lawyer and dig deep, deep into the small letters of the law to find and understand the kind of loopholes these guys are subjecting their employees to, and I've never heard of a company doing it this way. One example is that, while work weeks for all employees are a standard 5 days (Monday to Friday), in calculating the amount of vacation days you get they consider Saturday a workday too (even though nobody ever works on Saturdays), so Saturdays are included in the total amount of holiday you are allowed to take, lowering the total number below what is nationally used, accepted, and expected.
The whole situation is utterly demotivating and really, REALLY pissing me off and I've already started looking for other jobs, but considering how long it took me to find this one, it's hard to imagine being able to leave this place any time soon.
Post edited July 06, 2011 by Lorfean