On Friday, March 13, the Government presented a series of urgent measures to remedy the financial consequences of the coronavirus outbreak for Norwegian businesses and business world. For employers, three measures are particularly relevant.
The three measures are:
- The Government will reduce the number of days of payroll pay duty for the employer from 15 to two days (the employer period). The purpose is to reduce the employer's costs of temporary layoffs so that they can better adapt to market failure
- In addition, the Government will remove waiting days before the payment of unemployment benefit for employees who are temporary laid off. In practice, this means that employees can receive unemployment benefits the day after the employer period has ended
- The government will also change the requirement for reduced working hours for entitlement to unemployment benefit from 50 to 40 percent
It has been proposed that the measures should apply as soon as they have been dealt with in Stortinget (Parliament) and that they should also apply to layoffs implemented before the entry into force. This means that the period of the employer is "frozen" on the number of days that have expired at the entry into force. If, for example, the employer period has been running for six days, the employer period is considered to be terminated.
Please feel free to contact us if your business needs customization due to the coronavirus outbreak.
