The National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) believes the number of workplace drug checks has now hit 100,000 a year.

The practice is particularly popular in the transport sector and in jobs within the healthcare, security or surveillance industries.

The law surrounding drug testing in the workplace, which has been in force since 2004, permits both the screening of new recruits as well as of long-term employees if there is reason for suspicion.

When the practice was first made legal, only around 10,000 workers a year were tested. However, this number has now shot up tenfold according to Kimmo Kuoppasalmi, Chief Physician at THL’s Drug Research Unit.

He believes the current rate has almost reached its peak, however. “I think that the number will not increase much from this point. A very small proportion of these tests turn up positive in practice—about 1-2 percent. The preventive effect and the message that the workplace does not tolerate substance abuse are perhaps the most important factors,” Kuoppasalmi said in a YLE report.

The administrator, who has worked for Migrationsverket for 30 years, also admits assaulting a female colleague after she reported him for making racist remarks.

The first incident came when the proud asylum-seeking parents asked the Swede who he thought their newborn baby looked like during an interview. Rather than picking either the mother or the father as expected, the man replied “Saddam Hussein,” according to a report by The Local.

On another occasion, the administrator was apparently perturbed by a woman wearing a headscarf in the reception area, and afterwards asked the female colleague who dealt with her, “How does it feel to talk to ‘one of those’?”

The co-worker, who the man had also boasted to about his quip to the Iraqi parents, reported him for both incidents. After he received a reprimand from the bosses for his actions, the administrator then deliberately pushed the woman twice in front of other shocked employees as he passed her in the corridor.

The man has admitted to all the accusations but claims the Saddam Hussein comment was meant as a joke. He apparently acknowledges that it was inappropriate, but maintains that women conducting business with authorities should not be wearing headscarves.

Supervisors have had numerous other conversations with the man about his attitude towards asylum seekers and his colleagues since 2007, according to a report from the disciplinary committee obtained by The Local.

“The incidents described above show, according to the judgement of the section head, that the reprimands have had no effect,” the section head wrote in his report, adding that “under no circumstances can violent behaviour and the like be tolerated in the workplace”.

The man has been transferred to a role where he has no public contact while disciplinary measures are considered.

Primera Air has refused to sign a binding wage contract with its flight crews and Politiken yesterday reported that the company, which flies in and out of Kastrup and Billund in Denmark, uses a subsidiary in Guernsey to hire its flight attendants and classifies them as contractors.

Thilde Waast, head of the flight crews’ union, Flybranchens Personaleunion, says that employment as contractors does not assure flight crews any rights — adding that there are also many signs that companies involved in such employment practices are often trying to escape paying proper tax.

Jón Karl Ólafsson, president of Primera Air, confirmed to RÚV that the company does employ its crews through a company registered in Guernsey; but denies that tax is the reason. On the other hand, he says that airline staff who do not live in Denmark clearly do not pay tax to the Danish state.

A lot of low fares airlines employ their flight crews on a freelance basis; including Ryanair, Norwegian and Iceland Express.

Politiken reports that it is increasingly common for those contractors to be employed through companies based in tax havens. But now the Danish Flybranchens Personaleunion, FPU, has declared war on this kind of employment; describing it as a form of social dumping. Its flight stewards and stewardesses do not enjoy any of the rights their jobs should include; do not receive pension contributions, do not have maternity-paternity leave rights, or paid sick leave.

The FPU is calling on unions across the entire travel and tourism industry to boycott Primera Air and to not charter any of its aeroplanes after the 1st February.

The Teknik- og Miljøudvalget city planning council has decided to keep the six spotless loos after a ‘Save the pisswives’ petition gathered 7,756 signatures.

Scrapping the lavs and replacing them with automated booths would have saved DKK 20 million (EUR 2.7 million) per year. But Copenhageners and tourists would have lost the city’s cleanliest loos, and the tissekoners would have lost their jobs.

The FOA union, which represents the attendants, also pushed the council the keep the toilets, arguing that people caught short would not wait in line for single-use automatic conveniences.

“It has to do with safety, and also with making sure that people don’t urinate on the street. If there were automatic toilets, without pisswives, people wouldn’t stand in the queue. They would just go around the corner instead,” FOA’s labour representative Marianne Luckow told the Copenhagen Post.

Council chairman Bent Lohmann added, “If Copenhagen wants to continue to have the nightlife it has today, then there’s also the need for staffing [toilets]. Finally, it also has consequences for employment – we need jobs for unskilled workers,” he said.

The sting, which was carried out by Skat to address issues of payroll fraud within the baking industry, found that 43 out of 47 employees at 24 different bakeries were illegal workers. Of that 91 percent, 15 of the naughty kneaders were also claiming benefits.

According to broadcaster DR, it was the employees’ half-baked excuses that riled the tax collectors most. “One explained that he had just come down to the bakery to bake a cake for his son, whose birthday it was,” said Skat manager Lisbet Hedelund. “Another had apparently just popped in to make a batch of breakfast rolls for his family.”

The authority concluded that as many as four out of five bakery workers are not permitted to be employed in Denmark. Erik Ellitsgaard from the country’s bakers’ guild, however, was quick to steer the blame away from any of its members.

“It’s incredibly destructive – not just for the bakers, but also for Danish society,” Ellitsgaard told DR. “But we very much want to have a closer dialogue with Skat, because that’s not how we do things,” he added.

Temporary contracts are also not being renewed; meaning a total of 63 people will leave the bank today – the last day of November.

A statement from Íslandsbanki described the job losses as necessary, in part because of the reorganisation of the entire Icelandic financial sector and the increased cost of auditing and levies to the government.

The statement explained that Íslandsbanki has tried to limit the scale of job cuts as much as possible and that the higher number of women being put out of work is because 66.5 percent of bank employees are female.

According to Íslandsbanki, its reorganuisation following the merger with BYR is now complete, and all other jobs are therefore secure for now.

Despite using ‘collector’ instead of the S-word, the “interesting and non-traditional” job opportunities at Forsvarets Efterretningstjeneste (FE) have raised a few eyebrows in the media.

“You will be engaged in the physical collection of not-freely-accessible data about situations in other countries that are meaningful to Danish security and interests,” the advert reads. “The work will take place with the help of people who either possess or have access to information which is otherwise hidden from the outside world, and which FE needs for its intelligence work.”

As well as being fluent in both Danish and English, the ideal candidate for the job, which will begin in October next year, will need to have “well-developed social skills, be very outgoing, and have an easy time talking to anybody, regardless of their background.”

Similar adverts for ‘collectors’ were posted by FE in 2005 and 2008, when applicants were told they needed to be fluent in Pashto, Dari, Arabic and Farsi and able to spend long periods away from their families and friends. They were also required to take responsibility for another person’s life – and all for a meagre DKK 280,000 (EUR 36,618) a year.

Speaking to Information newspaper, senior researchers for the Danish Institute for International Studies, Bjorn Moller, said such a salary is “not very much, if you’re supposed to be responsible for other people’s lives, have other extraordinary qualities and speak a special language.”

He added that, “Those qualifications should add up to a completely different salary bracket, but, then, maybe a Porsche and a license to kill come with the package.”

The National Police Board is charged with finding out exactly what freebies and discounts officers receive while exercising their daily duties.

The probe comes after revelations that the police enjoy a whole range of benefits but that there are no common rules in place on the practice. Many of these arrangements, which are also said to be enjoyed by border security guards, are apparently unknown to station heads.

According to Tomi Vuori from the National Police Board, reduced-price or free passage on public transport has always been awarded to uniformed officers in exchange for maintaining order during their journey. But with it emerging that many restaurants are bars are also giving cops a free ride, he is concerned that businesses are trying to buy protection.

”Citizens shouldn’t feel as if someone is going to be looked after better for offering discounts,” said Vuori in a YLE report.

The results of the investigation are set to be released later this year.

The new deal, which was signed late on Thursday, will see wages go up by 4.25 percent on 1st June, as well as a one-off payment of ISK 50,000 for each employee (EUR 304), which will be paid out once the new wage contract has been approved by each union’s members in a vote, according to mbl.is.

“The average pay raise is 12.6 percent. If we subtract the estimated inflation [2.5-3.0 percent], we’re talking 7.5-8.0 percent price increases in the three-year contract period, we’re left with a purchasing power increase of three to four percent,” says Olafur Darri Andrason, chief Federation of Labour economist.

Unions hope that the greater than expected pay increases will serve to recoup some of Icelanders’ lost spending power since the economic crisis. It is also hoped that higher wages will not drive inflation to nearly the same extent as the krona exchange rate.

The change would see Iceland’s lowest earners getting over ISK 200,000 (EUR 1,203) per month for the first time, RUV reports. It would also see employers’ wage bills increase by around 13 percent throughout the whole economy. It is hoped the new national wage contract will be signed by the end of today, although some issues remain unresolved.

The long negotiation process between trades unions (which every employee is automatically a member of), the government and employers’ associations have been at a deadlock for weeks. At last progress was made yesterday and the meeting at the state mediator’s office lasted until 04.00 this morning and started again at 10.00.

Currently the minimum wage in Iceland is ISK 165,000 per month (EUR 993), but will likely increase to ISK around 200,000 in three stages over three years. Workers will also receive a one-off ISK 50,000 payment at the beginning of the new three-year contract period.