Portrait
Karen Ellemann – Nordic through and through
Aug 22, 2023 The Nordic Council of Ministers’ new Secretary General takes on responsibility for the Nordic cooperation as challenges are piling up – on security policy, the environment and the Nordic model itself. But she is an incurable optimist and believes the Nordic vision can be achieved.
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Scarpetta: The OECD has learned a lot from studying the Nordics
Apr 27, 2023 Stefano Scarpetta is excited when he goes up to the podium at the start of the OECD and Nordic Council of Ministers conference in Reykjavik. "I don't know how you did it, but thank you for the fantastic northern lights that we got to experience last night!"
Portrait
The Norwegian civil servant working for Sweden
Mar 23, 2023 In January, Norwegian Finn Ola Jølstad swapped his day job as a senior civil servant at the Ministry of Labour and Social Inclusion in Oslo for a job at the Swedish Ministry of Employment. His job exchange lasts six months and falls right in the middle of Sweden’s EU Presidency.
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Autonomy
Fredrik Karlström works hard to make Åland more diversified
Dec 10, 2021 Fredrik Karlström has become a veteran of Nordic labour market cooperation. The Minister for Industry and Trade in Åland’s government pops up in pictures everywhere in the Nordic Labour Journal archives. The first was taken in 2012, where he poses with Nordic colleagues on the quayside in Longyearbyen in Svalbard.
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Guðmundur Ingi Guðbrandsson: Planned to be a sheep farmer, now Iceland's labour minister
Dec 07, 2021 A new government in Iceland was announced on 28 November, over two months after the parliamentary elections. The new labour minister is Guðmundur Ingi Guðbrandsson from the Left-Green Movement.
Portrait
From Faroese independence to Nordic cooperation
Feb 01, 2021 When she was younger, Kristina Háfoss was known as one of the Faroe Islands’ top competition swimmers. In recent years she has been best known for her work for Faroese independence, but now she is also working actively for increased Nordic cooperation.
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Magdalena Nour: Raze barriers against international talent
Dec 10, 2020 Sweden lacks doctors, nurses, teachers and IT engineers, yet foreign-born job seekers struggle to access the Swedish labour market. If they make it as far as an interview, the experience often makes them feel surprise and frustration.
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Susanna Gideonsson: We must defend the Swedish model
Sep 08, 2020 Swedish LO’s new President, Susanna Gideonsson, has deep roots in the trade union movement. At 16 she started getting engaged in work against unfair conditions at work, and now she represents 1.4 million LO members across 14 unions. Her current main challenge is to protect the Swedish model against political interference in labour law reform.
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Danish Presidency: The Nordic cooperation passed the Corona test
Sep 03, 2020 Closed borders, economic confusion in Nordic cooperation forums and hundreds of millions of kroner for environment and climate work. These are some of the issues on the agenda for Nordic Ministers for Cooperation when they meet face-to-face for the first time since before the pandemic.
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Christer Holmlund: Teachers' psychological strain a theme for NLS
Jun 11, 2020 With the reopening of Nordic schools post-Corona, there needs to be more focus on teachers’ working conditions. They made a big digital leap with distance learning and this has been tiring, says Christer Holmlund, the new Secretary-General for NLS, the Nordic Teachers’ Union.
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A testing time for Director of Denmark's labour market agency
May 15, 2020 As the top boss for the Danish Agency for Labour Market and Recruitment STAR, Maria Schack Vindum has been busy after Corona suspended large parts of the country’s employment policy, created mounting unemployment and cleared the way for new solutions.
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Iceland’s unemployment soars fivefold
May 15, 2020 In just four weeks, unemployment in Iceland rose fivefold. At the end of February, 10,000 people had no jobs. By the end of March, the number was 50,000. This has never happened before, says Unnur Sverrisdóttir, head of Iceland’s Directorate of Labour VMST.
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Torbjørn Røe Isaksen takes on tricky government post
Feb 12, 2020 Torbjørn Røe Isaksen became Norway’s new Minister of Labour and Social Inclusion on 24 January. It is the least sought-after government post right now, after the biggest legal scandal in the country’s history. But Isaksen has ambitions.
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A portrait of the richest of the rich in Finland
Nov 27, 2019 Who are the richest one in a thousand in Finland – the euro millionaires? How do they view themselves and other Finns? These issues are being explored in one of the most discussed books this autumn: Huipputuloiset – or something like The Top Earners in English.
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Eva Nordmark's task: to liberalise Sweden’s employment act and reform the employment service
Oct 18, 2019 When former TCO President Eva Nordmark accepted to replace Ylva Johansson as Sweden’s Minister for Employment, she also accepted to follow up on proposals she had been critical of in the past, like the liberalisation of the employment act.
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