Norwegians are nothing but a bunch of lazy, spoiled brats.

**HoreTore** · 07-30-2007, 20:49

It's true, we are. I read an article about strawberry gatherers(is this the correct english word?) in the paper today, and though I knew it was that way, having all the facts laid out was quite brutal, to be honest. This is the situation in Norway, but I believe it's the same in most western countries.. Anyway:

The number one dessert in Norway during the summer, is without a doubt anything involving strawberries. We put them on anything, and eat them in every way you can imagine. We also have a nationalistic belief(or it might be the climate affecting the taste) that our strawberries are ze best, so while we have a lot of Belgian strawberries in april/may, we want our own as soon as possible. A lot of farmers grow them, and addition to selling them in stores, they're sold at stands all over the place, as well as directly at the farm. So far, so good. Unfortunately, unlike what certain spoiled brats might believe, the strawberries don't automatically jump from the plants and into the store. People have to pick the berries.

And this is where we show our true inner brats. There are practically NO norwegians doing that job. Instead, we rely on eastern european doctors, directors, engineers, etc. who see it as both a health vacation and a chance to make good money. One of the farmers interviewed in the article, said that during the last 10 years, he's had just 5-6 norwegians, and none of them has lasted more than a couple of days. This is a summer job, and so should be a perfect way for students to make some money. And we are talking real money here, this isn't a low-paying job(by comparison). They're paid from how much they gather, but the average wage is somewhere between 120-150 NOK, or 20-25 USD. That's well above the most common summerjob, shops, and about the same as an industry worker.

Why don't we pick our own strawberries? The money is good and the job is good for our health. Why have we become so damn lazy?

**Uesugi Kenshin** · 07-30-2007, 21:10

Is that 20-25 USD an hour? I'd definitely take that job. The best paying job I ever had was $15 an hour, and that was only three hours a week. The work can't be much fun, but with an MP3 player or something it'd be tolerable.

**Haudegen** · 07-30-2007, 21:14

Hmm. I think it´s because that kind of work can be painful. I bet your knees and your back will ache a lot after a day of gathering strawberries. At least if you´re not used to that kind of work.

Last autumn I had some time after I finished university while I was waiting for the next stage of my education at a court. An old friend from school offered me a job loading furniture on trucks, 9 hours a day, 7 euros per hour. Damn these were painful days... My co-workers told me it usually takes several months to get used to that stuff, and that a stronger physique (than mine) would have helped, too.

I think the strawberry season is just too short for casual workers like students to really get used to it.

**Sigurd** · 07-30-2007, 21:15

Whaddayamean….

The Norwegain strawberries are not picked by busty blond and naked norwegian chicks?

This is an outrage… get those lazy taneroxic sweethearts out of their skimpy bikinies and whip them out in the berry fields at once!!
No chance I am paying Igor or whatnot for manhandling my sweet and tender buds of delight reserved the touch of young and tender female hands.

...

**Alexander the Pretty Good** · 07-30-2007, 21:15

Being rather unfamiliar with the situation, I'll hazard a guess that your welfare state is killing the drive for work. If we shipped you a few of our illegal immigrants, I'm sure they'd be willing to work for $20 USD an hour.

**Csargo** · 07-30-2007, 21:17

I'd do it.

**HoreTore** · 07-30-2007, 22:30

Originally Posted by Alexander the Pretty Good

Being rather unfamiliar with the situation, I'll hazard a guess that your welfare state is killing the drive for work.

I doubt that, as they are working, but they choose to have low-paying, non-physical jobs instead. They choose to make 15 USD an hour instead of 20-25... And they're not paying any taxes either(if you don't make more than 6500 USD a year, you don't), so you can't blame that either... Our welfare state only kicks in when people are unemployed, when you're studying, you get a loan of about 1000USD a month, which isn't a lot to live for, so the drive for work is very high.

Originally Posted by Alexander the Pretty Good

If we shipped you a few of our illegal immigrants, I'm sure they'd be willing to work for $20 USD an hour.

Those are the people we are already forced to use

@Haudegen: one of the people interviewed in the article, was a female dentist from Ukraine... She said that the reason she came here wasn't because of the money, it was sort of a health vacation to counter her own job, on which she was sitting all the time...

(Btw, it's 20-25 USD an hour, the usual pay at a grocery store is somewhere around 17USD I think)

**Big King Sanctaphrax** · 07-30-2007, 23:36

~£10 an hour? I'd definitely do it.

The most I can earn doing temp office work in the UK is £7 an hour.

**Evil_Maniac From Mars** · 07-30-2007, 23:49

I would have done that as a summer job.

**Snowhobbit** · 07-31-2007, 00:13

As a proud swede I can say I threw away books for 20$ an hour during this summer

Ofcourse I kept some for myself

**Strike For The South** · 07-31-2007, 00:36

thats 3 times what I make right now

**AntiochusIII** · 07-31-2007, 04:59

Sounds like America.

I'm a liberal weenie nutjob who pays very little attention to the big issue of illegal immigration and its associated problems for precisely one reason: I like strawberries. A lot. Mmm.

**Crazed Rabbit** · 07-31-2007, 05:09

They're paid from how much they gather, but the average wage is somewhere between 120-150 NOK, or 20-25 USD.

20-25 USD! Good grief! I did 80 hours a week at a raspberry farm for 7.50 and no overtime pay! Heck, I know a guy who's been working in the painting industry for 20+ years and doesn't make more than that. Of course, I suppose everything's more expensive there, too.

I wonder what it costs to get a plane ticket to Norway...

Hmmm, it'd be a fun summer trip.

CR

**Fragony** · 07-31-2007, 08:47

Untill you find out what that buys you in Norway, great country but hidously expensive.

**doc_bean** · 07-31-2007, 10:05

The cost of living in Norway seems about twice as high as in the rest of Europe, wages are accordingly. So while this seems like a decent paying job, it's not actually as ridiculously overpaid as you might think.

Now the issue at hand. It's just the way these things work, we have a lot of asians (mostly Sikhs it seems) working in our food industry, quiet a lot of eastern europeans are imported during harvest season. It's been proposed multiple times that we just force the unemployed to pick berries and other fruit if they desire to keep their welfare benefits, but this idea is generally opposed from different parties (including the farmers).

**Sigurd** · 07-31-2007, 10:36

Originally Posted by Fragony

Untill you find out what that buys you in Norway, great country but hidously expensive.

yeah... you couldn't buy a pizza for that.

Mind you... I tried to search on the net how much a picker needs to pick to receive a 120-150 NoK as a hourly wage, but I came up empty.

I think there are only two models, a fixed daily wage with a fixed amount pr litre or punnet as an addition, or just an amount, say 10 NoK a litre.
A fast picker would get much, but a slow one would earn little.

I found some basic math exercises using strawberry picking as an example.
It said one picker earned 70 NoK a day as a fixed sum and received 8 NoK pr liter as an additional wage. The example suggested that the picker managed around 90 litres a day.
It did not state how long they spent picking. In Norway you should not need to work more than 7,5 hours a day.
This makes an hourly sum of: 70 + (8 * 90) /7,5 = 105 NoK

Another picker just got 10 NoK a litre with no fixed daily wage.
This should make (10*90)/7,5 = 120 NoK as an hourly wage.

One Lithuanian nurse said she would get 30 000 NoK the summer she spent picking strawberries. As a comparison an average yearly salary in Lithuania is 34 000 NoK.
According to our tax assessment office you can earn a yearly 39 997 NoK without having to pay a single krone in taxes.
However, you need to have Tax deduction card or a “free card”. If you don’t have this, your employer by law needs to deduct 50% of your wage as tax.
Remember that the 39 997 is including vacation allowance which is 12%. So if you earn 30 000 NoK you will receive a vacation allowance of 3600 NoK.