- Our members cannot understand it, and for good reason, says Jakob Lykke, chairman of 3F Transport in Esbjerg.
The union organizes scaffolding workers, surface finishers and insulators who work offshore in the oil and gas industry. Jakob Lykke therefore often experiences that his members start working in the North Sea again after working on land, and then they get a shock.
- "That can't be right, I get paid less today than I did 15 years ago" was someone who called and said the other day, Jakob Lykke says about a salary situation that he is anything but satisfied with for his members.
"Maersk started with temporary work in Denmark"
Until 2015, there were high salaries when working offshore.
- The norm until 2015 was that you got between two and three hours of overtime per day, but in reality you didn't work those hours overtime. It was a customary agreement at Maersk that was saved in connection with the low oil prices. These are the so-called "paper hours", explains Jakob Lykke and continues:
- That is also why there are now so few Danes who want to be away from their families for 14 days at a time for a salary of around 35,000 DKK.
His members work 12 hours for 14 days at a time, either night or day – before taking 21 days off. It is for the five-week period that the salary is around 35,000 DKK. plus pension. He has no doubt about who is responsible for the offshore employees' salaries today.
- Maersk was clever back then, because they used custom instead of making agreements. They were actually the first to use temporary workers in Denmark by hiring through subcontractors, says Jakob Lykke.
Jakob Lykke sees not hiring employees themselves as a very unfortunate trend that has been taken over in full by Maersk's successor as head of oil and gas exploration TotalEnergies.
- From the platform manager down, people are simply hired for the job. It affects the entire working environment and the entire flow of employees that we see. The global companies would rather hire people than employ them. In my opinion, they are abdicating all responsibility. It is people and not fries that are the issue here, says Jakob Lykke.
Huge profits at the energy companies
The energy crisis and skyrocketing prices have meant that something must now be done about wages, says the trade unionist from Esbjerg, who also sits on the municipal council of Esbjerg Municipality for the Social Democrats.
- The five largest profits in the world are in the oil industry. Now it is time for a significant wage increase for our members as well. Remember that the oil executives have received one wage increase after another, says Jakob Lykke.
He is also not shy about putting a figure on how much the wages should increase for his members.
- It should be at least DKK 40,000 or more. We can just take the same percentage that the CEO at Total has increased, then we are satisfied, says Jakob Lykke.
Text, graphics, images, sound, and other content on this website are protected under copyright law. DK Medier reserves all rights to the content, including the right to exploit the content for the purpose of text and data mining, cf. Section 11b of the Copyright Act and Article 4 of the DSM Directive.
Customers with IP agreements/major customer agreements may only share Danish Offshore Industry articles internally for the purpose of handling specific cases. Sharing in connection with specific cases refers to journaling, archiving, or similar uses.
Customers with a personal subscription/login may not share Danish Offshore Industry articles with individuals who do not themselves have a personal subscription to Danish Offshore Industry.
Any deviation from the above requires written consent from DK Medier.
