SAS allows for the hiring of low-paid – Aftenposten

SAS allows for the hiring of low-paid – Aftenposten

If airlines can continue to use cheap foreign labor on routes between Scandinavia and the USA, will also SAS consider the same.

SAS leadership has so far categorically rejected the possibility that the company will follow the example of including Ryanair and Norwegian. Budget airlines have had to endure scathing criticism for basing more and more of their operations on the staff who are employed by a private company. The jobs are outsourced to external recruitment companies that employ people on local wage levels, while companies avoid having any employer responsibility for these.

The SAS is not so sure of his opposition anymore.

Warns outsourcing

In a letter the company sent the Ministry protesting SAS strongly to the company sees as an unfair favoritism of English. Bjørn Kjos has since summer 2013 have been able to fly long routes to the United States with low-paid Asian men, who live outside the EU / EEA and not have work and residence permit in Norway. This is possible because airlines operating on an exemption from Luftafrtstilsynet.

The SAS will now have an end, and has put forward the demand for this in a letter to the Ministry. SAS warns that if there are established rules that provide a level playing field for all companies, this may have consequences for the company’s employment policy:

– Our position remains that we should rely on their own, permanent employees Scandinavian conditions to live, work and pay their taxes in Scandinavia. However, we can not guarantee this forever if competitors get government permission to operate under different and far more favorable economic conditions, says director Knut Morten Johansen of SAS.

– No threat

He thinks it is important to note that SAS is the only European company that is in direct competition with airlines on flights from Scandinavia to the United States.

– Competition from English we believe is based on a circumvention of the Norwegian legislation. This allows the company to operate with very different conditions than SAS, which obviously have to deal with taxes, fees, rules and conditions that we have here in Scandinavia, says Johansen.

He stressed that the letter should not be perceived as an empty threat:

– This is not a threat. We want the authorities to facilitate a level playing field so that SAS is not forced into a situation that goes beyond the Scandinavian jobs, says Johansen.

Solvik-Olsen: Like terms

letter to the Ministry of Transport says SAS that we find it totally unfair that the Norwegian government is planning to provide English dispensation.

The top management of the SAS has on several occasions expressed less resistance to having a staff that is not employee of the company. CEO Rickard Gustafson has previously determined refused to follow employment policy in Norwegian and Ryanair. In recent times he has changed their formulations that “SAS should not be a driving force” for such a new practice.

Transport Minister Ketil Solvik-Olsen will Aftenposten not comment on the claim from SAS, but writes in an e-mail that it is the Ministry’s objective that the Norwegian aviation stakeholders should have equal conditions for their business.

English: – SAS get special treatment

Norwegian will apply for extended exemption to continue their USA flights when the existing exemption is out in mid-December, said communications director Anne-Sissel Skånvik. She strongly disagree that it is English that gets special treatment by Norwegian authorities:

– It is just over a claim from a company which itself sits in a special arrangement from the Scandinavian authorities where they have one foot in the EU and one leg outside and can operate aircraft and crew “free” between the countries of Scandinavia. English denied a similar equal treatment. We must – like SAS – also have a foothold in the EU in the future. That we do not have this right in place means we lose access to routes we might otherwise have flown. We refused to fly between Helsinki and Dubai because we are not in the EU.

– Special Treatment SAS is the Scandinavian governments are strong competition, we sought Norwegian authorities for equal treatment several years ago and been denied this because SAS scheme is “historically contingent”. Besides running SAS a lobby apparatus against the American authorities to stop the English, says Skånvik.

Published: 24.sep. 2,014 7:41 p.m.