Organizational struggle and wage settlement

There have been several reports that Industri Energi (IE) is more or less throwing in the towel and would sign long before the other two unions.

Here we probably need more than an ever so small correction.

Firstly, we see that the organizational battle that is unfolding is moving into a phase where lies abound on the rigs. In this information, we only deal with the salary settlement.

After there was a breakdown during the negotiations in May, we had to go to the National Ombudsman at the end of June.

MAF had 3 representatives in the mediation. Like all other mediations, we cannot publish anything about what is happening or what offers are coming up.

What we can say anyway was that we had clear demands and expectations that our demands had to be met. One of the main demands from MAF was this with an employer's right to be able to use the employees' free time in connection with e.g. a pandemic, quarantine or testing, and compensation for this. As far as we know, only IE had a requirement that this should be included in the collective agreement and compensated for.

This was included until the very end and when the national mediator came with the absolute last offer, this was taken away.

At the same time, two other clubs in IE also had demands that Norwegian Ship owners Association(NSA) did not want to meet either. MAF also believed that the percentage in the latest offer was too low.

We ended up having to vote on whether to take the offer or go on strike.

MAF and three other clubs voted against and with our representatives, we lost the vote by one! (1) voice. 

During this vote, something happens that everyone should notice.

SAFE and DSO were then ready in the hallway waiting for our delegation leader and wanted him to sign the offer. He actually had to go and ask them to wait a bit because we were in the middle of a very critical situation.

How can it be that some employees of Maersk Drilling Norge AS who were not there, can say that IE did not contribute to the salary settlement?

The three organizations negotiate in parallel, everyone gets the same offer, everyone can say either yes or no. As I said, we were very close to voting down the last offer the national mediator had made. Then you can't say that there was someone else who did more than others.

I have every respect for both SAFE and DSO during the mediation and there has not been a single word that SAFE or DSO did anything more than others. We know that there were hard discussions at both SAFE and DSO and that they had their disagreements, but that there too it was the majority in the delegation that then everyone must stand behind.

But let this be about what came out of this instead of trying to take credit for something that isn't there.

That this, in addition, then comes from people who were not there and that this is only put in a context to create discord and strife is then completely wrong and directly misleading.

We were there, we know.