LO president resigns following allegations of harassment

In March 2007, the President of the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO), Gerd-Liv Valla, announced her resignation. Ms Valla decided to step down following accusations of harassment made by one of her employees at LO. The Deputy President of LO, Roar Flåthen, has since been appointed as the new president of the confederation.

Alleged harassment case

A conflict between the President of the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions, Landsorganisasjonen i Norge, LO), Gerd-Liv Valla, and the former head of LO’s international department, Ingunn Yssen, dominated media headlines in January 2007. News of the conflict emerged in the media when Ms Yssen published her letter of resignation from LO in one of the larger newspapers in Norway. In the letter, the former LO head stated that she had been harassed by the LO president, among others, by having job responsibilities taken away from her. The harassment had forced her to take sick leave and subsequently led to her resignation. Ms Valla argued that the accusations were ill-founded, and publicly claimed that Ms Yssen had been unable to fulfil her role as head of the LO’s international department, adding that attempts to find alternative work for her in the organisation had been unsuccessful.

The increasing media coverage that followed placed growing pressure on LO and Ms Valla; as a result, the LO’s executive committee commissioned an independent inquiry into the matter. The committee, led by legal expert Jan Fougner, was given a free mandate to assess the conflict between Ms Yssen and the LO president. The Fougner committee’s report (in Norwegian, 315Kb PDF) concluded that there was strong evidence to suggest that harassment had in fact taken place, and that Ms Yssen’s treatment could be considered as being in breach of the Act relating to working environment, working hours and employment protection, known as the Working Environment Act (Arbeidsmiljøloven, AML (in Norwegian)). The report also concluded that, as an employer, LO had insufficient guidelines on how to handle internal conflicts.

Ms Valla outlined in her statement (in Norwegian) that she did not accept the conclusions of the inquiry and argued that the process had been unfair. However, she agreed to withdraw from her position to avoid further damage to LO’s reputation. LO’s executive committee immediately appointed Deputy President Roar Flåthen as the new president of the confederation. The General Council is expected to endorse the change in leadership at their meeting in April 2007. Mr Flåthen will remain in this position until LO’s next national congress in 2009.

Divisions within LO

The conflict within LO has led to renewed discussions about the traditionally close relationship between LO and the Norwegian Labour Party (Det norske Arbeiderparti, DnA) (NO0212102F, NO0505103F). It is argued that the links between DnA and LO have been weakened due to negative media attention. Moreover, LO is believed to have lost some of its significant influence accumulated since the 2005 election, when DnA came back into office, partly due to strong LO support for a change of government.

The conflict has also exposed a potential divergence between what are regarded as the left-wing and right-wing contingents of the LO union. Ms Valla has been seen as a supporter of the left-wing DnA party and received strong support throughout the conflict from, among others, the influential LO-affiliated union the Norwegian Union of Municipal and General Employees (Fagforbundet). On the other side, the President of the largest private sector union, the Norwegian United Federation of Trade Unions (Fellesforbundet), Kjell Bjørndalen, was a strong supporter of the independent inquiry that finally resulted in the LO president’s resignation. Mr Bjørndalen and others argued that LO had no choice but to investigate the issue, in order to retain confidence as a leading player in the fight for a decent working environment. Conversely, opponents of the inquiry saw the conflict as an attempt to undermine the controversial and influential LO president, both by the media and by critics within and outside of DnA.

Commentary

Ms Valla’s appointment to the top position of the Norwegian trade union movement in 2001 was considered a historical event (NO0105132F). Not only was Ms Valla the first woman to take up the position of LO president, she was also the first academic to do so. Another significant aspect was the fact that she came from one of the public sector unions. Ms Valla quickly proved to be a strong LO president, and LO’s contribution under her leadership was considered an important factor in DnA’s reappointment to government office after the 2005 elections. However, at times, the LO president expressed her criticism of the Labour-led coalition government, and was seen as the driving force behind the government’s withdrawal of its proposal to change the sickness benefit scheme in 2006 (NO0609019I, NO0611029I).

Ms Valla’s successor, Roar Flåthen, has a more traditional LO background as a blue-collar worker within the manufacturing sector, as well as having a long track record within Fellesforbundet.

Kristine Nergaard, Fafo