On 23 June 2002, some 200 players in the Norwegian football league's two highest divisions took part in Norway's first football strike. The action arose from a dispute over issues including players' contracts and occupational injury insurance.
Norway saw its first football strike on 23 June 2002, when 203 players in the Norwegian football league's two highest divisions took strike action. The action followed unsuccessful mediation between the Norwegian Athletes Organisation (Norsk Idrettsutøveres Sentralorganisasjon, NISO), a member trade union of the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (Landsorganisasjonen i Norge, LO) (NO9901112N), representing the players, and the football clubs, represented by the Confederation of Norwegian Business and Industry (Næringslivets Hovedorganisasjon, NHO). The dispute involved, among other issues, disagreement over new employment contracts and the introduction of occupational injury insurance. Most games were cancelled during the strike on 23 June, which affected 15 clubs, including the Norwegian champions 10 times in a row, Rosenborg BK.
The most important issue at stake in the negotiations was NISO’s demand for new standard 'player', or 'employment' contracts. During the last revision of the collective agreement covering footballers, the clubs committed themselves to drawing up new standard 'employment' contracts, and NISO wanted the content of these agreements to be determined by collective agreements – the implication of this would be that such contracts would be subject to Norwegian labour law, which is not the case today. NHO, on the other hand, did not want to see any changes to the present system, and maintained that contracts should remain the responsibility of the Norwegian Football Association (Norsk Fotballforbund, NFF). NISO also wanted to see changes to the present transfer system for professional footballers to be regulated by collective agreement. The employer side wanted the issue of transfers to be placed within the present standard player contracts, and thus decided by NFF.
In addition to the demands mentioned above, NISO also wanted to see the introduction of fund-based occupational injury insurance schemes for its members, since the present insurance schemes are not made to fit athletes and footballers. Such insurance funds should be financed partly from money made available to the clubs through television revenues. The fourth important demand concerned players’ rights to control over their own names, pictures and signatures. NISO wants copyright in these areas to be laid down in the collective agreement.
NISO failed to obtain acceptance for any of its demands from the employers, apart from a commitment to further deliberate over new insurance schemes.
The strike caused controversy and brought significant media attention. A number of high-profile football club managers called for an end to the strike and described the action taken as purposeless and unethical. The manager of Rosenborg BK, Nils Arne Eggen, said that there was no good reason for resorting to strike action and went as far as to suggest that players should leave NISO in protest. However, the LO president, Gerd-Liv Valla, stressed the legality of the actions taken by the players, and replied that it was contrary to Norwegian tradition to encourage strike-breaking.
Hennings Jakhelln, head of the Department of Public and International Law at the University of Oslo, who has for many years criticised player contracts in Norwegian football, stressed the parties' obligations under the European Court of Justice's 1995 ruling in the Bosman case, which clearly lays down the individual rights of footballers (the Court found that players were entitled to a free transfer at the end of their contract with a club). Thus new transfer provisions have to fall within the scope of this legal framework. The fundamental principle in this case, according to Professor Jakhelln, is that the social partners must ensure that their agreements do not violate the principle of freedom of movement of workers.