Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions

Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions
Formation	1899
Headquarters	Oslo, Norway
Interest of	Norwegian People's Aid
The largest and most influential umbrella organization of labour unions in Norway, closely connected to the Labour Party.

The Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (Norwegian: Landsorganisasjonen i Norge, LO) is a national trade union center, decidedly the largest most influential umbrella organization of labour unions in Norway. The 21 national unions affiliated to the LO have almost 1,000,000 members of a Norwegian population of 5 million. The majority of affiliated unions organizes traditional blue collar workers, but the largest affiliate is the Norwegian Union of Municipal and General Employees which makes up more than a third of all members.

Ever since the first years in 1899, LO had very strong ties to the Labour Party, among other things through collective membership. According to the two organizations, the close co-operation between LO and the Labour Party is itself a co-operation between independent organizations with overlapping interests. The Labour Party also traditionally elects LO's top shop stewards to its central commitee.

Own surveillance central

Folkets Hus, its headquarters in Oslo

The union had its own wiretapping center, located on the 9th floor of the union's headquarters, Folkets Hus, in Oslo during the Cold War.

The goal of the wiretapping was to register and control dissidents. The building was hired out as a meeting locale to most left-wing organizations in Norway, including the several Communists ones. From room 906 at LO's headquarters in Oslo, a few select employees could choose any hall or a meeting room in the house and listen in headphones to what was said there.. The tapes that were recorded with the help of Gompen were passed on to the surveillance services,primarily POT, who printed them out. Copies of the transcripts were distributed to selected persons within the Labor Party, LO and the intelligence services.

The surveillance was revealed by Ronald Bye, who himself for a time was main responsible for the bugging.

Stay behind

After World War 2 the Labour movement conducted an extensive surveillance and registering of its communist rivals, and were the main drivers in getting communist labour unionists fired from their workplaces. Rolf Gerhardsen, brother of Prime Minister Einar Gerhardsen, led this work, under cover of his main job as editor-in-chief of Arbeiderbladet.

The Labour movement also had its own stay behind system, of which little is known.

 

Related Quotation

Page	Quote	Author	Date
Norwegian Labour Party	“The Labour Party is no damn Sunday school.”	Haakon Lie	1975

 

Employee on Wikispooks

Employee	Job	Appointed	End
Kaare Sandegren	Head of the international department	1971	1994

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