After years of economic growth, downsizing has become alarmingly common among Norwegian businesses reeling from the sharp decline in oil prices. A law firm in Stavanger, a city hit especially hard by the downturn in the oil sector, has now written up a summary in English of the rights workers have if they suddenly face losing their jobs.
As companies aim to cut costs and boost or even just retain profitability, the consequences for employees facing redundancy “cannot be overstated,” writes attorney Benjamin Törnroos of law firm Projure in Stavanger.
Projure, which recently held seminars to guide foreign workers through a downsizing process, has emerged as one of the few law firms specifically addressing the consequences faced by foreign workers residing in Norway. For them, the loss of a job can mean they’ll have to leave the country, either because their working permission was tied to their job, they don’t qualify for unemployment benefits and face financial difficulty, or they’ll face more difficulty than Norwegians do in finding a new job in Norway.
Meanwhile, it can be an even more daunting and traumatic for foreigners to go through the actual layoff process than for Norwegians, if they lack familiarity with Norwegian labour law and their own rights. Törnroos has thus written a guide through what he calls the “key steps” of a typical downsizing process. Click here for the full text.
newsinenglish.no staff
