A Roll in the Universe

I remember strikes used to terrify me. I was so brain-washed by the American view of unions that I quit mine here in Norway once in a panic. I rejoined quickly and have a gold pin for 25 years' membership and first-hand knowledge of what it's like to be on a proper strike. As April rolls around, unions start negotiations. It's a bi-annual thing. My union (the union of financial and insurance employees) does its thing in even-numbered years. This year it's a tad more interesting than usual. We've broken off negotiations. There are three main points of contention that my union won't agree to. If we don't get anywhere, even with mandatory negotiations, there will be a strike. This whole process will take at least a month. So I lied when I said May is for strikes. It can just as well be June, or April, or September. Or whenever. But Norway revolves around May 1, and most unions release their new wage scales on that date, and the government sets the value for G ...

Youngstorget, Oslo When I first moved to Norway in 1969, politics here were so left-leaning that they were approaching extremism. Yesterday, in local elections, the Norwegian Labor party (Arbeiderpartiet) once again became Norway's most powerful party, and had its biggest win in Bergen since 1967. A fact that makes me happy now, but which was my bane as a child. So what's changed? The anti-US sentiments of the 1960's and early 1970's that permeated a lot of Europe (partly due to the Vietnam war) eased by the 1980's. The anti-American sentiments I heard as a child, were virtually gone when I came back to Norway in 1981. Since then, Arbeiderpartiet's close ties to Norway's largest union, LO, have loosened, making the party more accessible to those who don't like LO. More importantly, I've changed. I'm going against Winston Churchill's advice: “If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative...