NITO has declared assistance to the parties when the Supreme Court is to define "particularly independent position"

The case that will be heard in the Supreme Court concerns a newly qualified engineer who, in his first job, was exempt from the working hours regulations and thus was without both working time protection and the right to overtime pay. He has lost the case in two instances, but the Supreme Court will now consider whether the exception was correctly applied. 

"Even if the employee is not a member with us, NITO wants to step in as a party assistant because the case is of great importance in principle for our members and for working life. This is not about one person, it is about the legal situation for a large group of employees," says Linn Marie Schilling Tjensvold, Director of the Employment Department at NITO. 

"For NITO, this is both relevant and principled. We see that the right to make exceptions is practiced too broadly, and this is about basic protection of working hours and health. When employees are wrongly exempted, they lose protection against long and stressful working hours. We have seen many examples where employees are exposed to unjustifiable work pressure," says Tjensvold.  

For many years, NITO has worked to clean up the practice of the right to exemption, including through assistance to members and union representatives, legal processes, dialogue with the authorities and active involvement in the public debate. 

President of NITO, Kjetil Lein, believes it is important that Norway's largest union for engineers and technologists contributes to a matter that is of great importance in principle.  

"When the country's highest court now draws the line for the use of this exception, NITO will contribute with our knowledge and experience. We owe it to both our members and the labour market as a whole," says Lein.