The Basic Agreement and the Basic Collective Agreement for the Civil Service.
These agreements are still valid. Meetings following up these agreements are being held with the Director of the University. Meetings at every Faculty and Museum will be resumed as soon as the situation is normalised.
Local Salary negotiations HTA, 2.5.3:
The next negotiation in April is postponed.
Local Salary negotiations HTA, 2.5.1:
These negotiations are also postponed. The central negotiations at national level, starts at the end of August.
Parents who need to stay home with children?
Employees must consider whether they can combine home office with supervising children, or whether taking care of children means that they must completely or partially be absent from work. This will depend among other things on the age of the children.
The right to leave in the case of a child’s illness is stipulated in section 20 of the Basic Collective Agreement as 10 working days per calendar year for each employee, and applies for children up to the age of and including the year they turn 12. You may receive care benefit for:
10 days per calendar year if you are responsible for the care of one or two children.
15 days per calendar year if you are responsible for the care of more than two children.
20 days per calendar year if you have the sole responsiblitiy for the care of one or two children.
30 days per calendar year if you have the sole responsiblitiy for the care of more than two children.
In a press conference on 16 March, 2020, the Norwegian Government announced that those who are at home with children and are about to reach the family care allowance limit will have the period extended to a total of 20 days for each parent.
Therefore, UiO asks employees who have to stay home with children because of closed schools/kindergartens to use family care leave days (sick child). If the quota for care days is exhausted, the employer will grant compassionate leave with pay.
PhD and postdoctoral fellows
The question has been raised about whether PhD and postdoctoral fellows may be granted an extension of their employment in connection with taking care of children due to closed schools/kindergartens.
In principle, the regulations require two consecutive weeks of absence before extension is granted. Based on the special situation that has arisen, UiO will, as long as schools and kindergartens are closed, waive the requirement for continuous absence. Extension is granted to all PhD and postdoctoral fellows who are absent for 10 days or more during the period. Employees are asked to send a message to the employer about this.
UiO sees that PhD and postdoctoral fellows are a particularly vulnerable group and therefore, is considering their situation.
NAR (Forskerforbundet) has encouraged the leadership of the University to make lists of all employees with contracts soon to expire, to make sure that leaders follow up theese employees and consider an extension.
Not only employees taking care of children are exposed in this difficult situation, but also those with difficult surroundings (noise) at home, those unable to start their research project in Norway or abroad. We have a good dialogue with the leadership about this at the moment, and at the same time NAR nationally.
If the current situation will endure, we are certain that many employees will experience delays in their work. We are worried that our PhDs, postdocs and researchers on externally funded project will be more severely effected by the situation than other employees.