Norway's breweries shut over EU labour flood fears

Norway's breweries shut yesterday due to a strike by 2,600 workers fearful that European Union expansion will bring a flood of cheap labour into the high-cost Nordic country.

All production of beer and soft drinks at 12 breweries, including the biggest plant which is run by Denmark's Carlsberg , came to a halt during the peak early summer season for beer drinking in Norway.

"We want to keep our jobs," chief negotiator Oystein Gaare of the Norwegian Food and Allied Workers Union (NNN) told Reuters. "We want real influence in how and for how long labour is hired."

He said unions wanted a say in decisions about hiring to assuage concerns that breweries in Norway, with very high labour costs, will bring in cheaper workers from the eastern European countries that joined the European Union on May 1.

It was the first strike in Norway linked to worries about EU expansion to include 10 new nations from Poland to the Baltic states.

Unions "want a veto right but they can't have it," Carl Roenneberg, director of the Federation of Norwegian Food and Beverages (NBL) employers' group, told Reuters. He said the workers' fear of competition from cheap labour was unfounded.