Its 6 am on a Monday morning and Morten, a 56 y/o Dane living in Copenhagen is getting ready for a new day at work at the local supermarket: “Netto”, a subsidiary of Denmarks biggest and most influential supermarket chain ‘Salling Group’.

This might seemingly look like a completely normal routine for a regular guy with a regular job and if you met him on the bus, you would never realize that he is a part of a billion dollar government/corporate deal to supply “free of charge” labor to companies all over Denmark.

Morten is a part of the Danish government’s “activation” job programme aiming to “re-employ” unemployed, immigrants, sick and marginalized citizens before they become a burden to society. This is facilitated by a government initiative called “Jobnet”, which since the 1990s has supplied hundreds of thousands of unemployed citizens as free laborers in notorious and much hated “job resource projects“ or “Try before you buy” schemes, that is often compared to a version of Russian Gulags, only with “nicer” furniture.

Denmark is usually celebrated worldwide as a Human Rights beacon with high equality, high living standards and even free healthcare, but the underbelly of Denmark is now getting increasingly fed up by the labor politics of the current government.

Forced labour, massive exploitation of unemployed and gravely-lill citizens being sent to work in warehouses are just some of the ALL TIME most discussed and upvoted stories on the subreddit r/Denmark.

Horror stories of forced labor getting PTSD from years of being sent to multiple job resource projects, cancer patients sent to companies in so called Bed internships, where they are forced to work while bedridden in a hospital bed.

Lars Nielsen, 49 years old from Randers (City in Denmark), was lying on an interim bed made of three euro pallets and a mattress in an ice-cold warehouse. Lars Nielsen was on morphine for pain and froze so much that three other people were needed to help him get back on his feet. Source

Stories like Lars Nielsen’s job resource project or work trial from the local Jobcenter, is not a rare sight in the news. Due to excruciating pain, he can only work a few minutes a day , the rest of the time he lies on cold mattress in an ice-cold warehouse.

This is just one of thousands of stories about the inhumane contitions the Danish government are facilitating in collaboration with ruthless Danish companies.
Stories flourish of unemployed immigrants, recently arrived Ukranian refugees, under the pretext of helping them learn Danish, are being exploited as free labour. Unskilled citizens working in sweatshops in backrooms of jobcenters, bagging bits and parts for local hardware companies or picking up trash in orange jumpsuits, are periodically making headlines in newspapers around the country.

“Slave labour” — Scandinavian-style.

So if you thought that modern slavery was a Chinese (Uyghur) or a Russian (Gulag) phenomenon, you might want to check out the Danish version, its the same, just with nicer furniture and in plain sight of your family and friends.
The Danish government has perfected this model into a more sinister Scandinavian version, where you, if you were unfortunate enough to loose your job, might get “re hired” by your old employer, but this time as a rights-less governmenment contractor, doing the same chores you did before, but for just 5€/hr. without paid holiday or overtime.

Denmarks “No Minimum wage policy” is increasingly converting low skilled /low wage jobs into “free” jobs supplied by the government to make unemployment numbers look artificially low.

Denmark has a very unique labourmarket, where unions & companies negotiate a “fair” wage ofr employees. This has historically worked well, but this model has come under pressure with the increasingly open European labor market, giving companies an opportunity to subcontract temp-agencies from abroad with employees on zero hour contacts, making the current labor market defacto “Wild West” for jobtakers not knowing what wage to negotiate.

Without a minimum wage, the government can help Danish businesses exploit unemployed by giving companies access to a blue ocean of manpower “free of charge” — creating artificailly low unemployment figures and help Danish companies become more competative against foreign companies.

Info:
Government pays unemployed a montly benefit starting at €800 pr month (before taxes) depening on how many dependencies you have, the Jobcenter will then force you to work for the companies they have arrangements with for 37/h week, this totals an average of 5€ pr hour for a 160hr work-month, and this is even before taxes are being deducted, creating a precarious parallell underclass without any labour rights — working the same jobs as their paid colleagues but for at fraction of the pay and zero rights.

Freedom to die from starvation

The irony of this, is that “low skilled” jobs like warehouse-workers, fast-food workers, supermarket cashiers, garbage collectors, window cleaners etc. are now incresingly dissapearing from job bulletin boards and these positions are now being filled with free labour from the goverment, making it increasingly difficult for the everyday Danes apply for a regular unskilled / unsubsidized job, without being referred from the local jobcenter.

Anyone is free to go apply for jobs that are no longer advertised without subsidies from the government.

A sinister plan to manipulate unemployment statistics

When the former employment-minister and current prime-minister Mette frederiksen created the “Try before you buy” scheme, seemingly helping citizens get a foothold back on the labormarket, by giving companies an opportunity to “intern” a potential employee before comitting to a contract. Jobnet now almost completely supply Danish companies with unpaid “Try before you buy” workers, based on a refund incentive offered to local councils (kommuner) by the Central government for “Activating” unemployed into companies. keeping the unemployemnt numbers artificially low

INFO:

The registered gross unemployment rate in December was 70,900 full-time employees, corresponding to 2.5%. of the workforce. However, there are more unemployed than teh gross unemployment numbers suggests. Gross unemployment, for example, does not include unemployed people who do not receive benefits or students who are looking for a job.

The unemployment rate is significantly higher if you include everyone who wants a job and is actively looking for a job and can start a job within a short time. In fact, there are 156,000 unemployed according to Statistics Denmark’s labor force survey. This corresponds to 5.1 per cent. of the workforce.

A great “deal” for companies (Business internships as free labor)

Large Retail Chains like Salling Group, comprised of Netto, Bilka, Foetex. Reitan Group (Rema 1000) and COOP (Super Brugsen, Fakta & Kvickly) have incorporated free labour from the government as an integral part of their budgets, saving them millions in wages under the notion that they are helping people that otherwise can’t get a job, a chance to get one.

But the reality is clealy very different

Far from everyone gets a job right after completing an internship. The supermarket industry in particular makes use of the scheme, and HK Handel (Danish Union) believes that it can quickly develop into ‘cheap labor’.

Susanne Sommerlund, chairman of HK Handel MidtVest

But statistics tell a much different story, now less than 1 in 4 the has been in a “Try before you buy” program gets hired. So whats happeing now, is that companies will request new candiates for another 3–6 month scheme, and this is now the norm of how retail stores recruit “new talent” in an endless supply of free labour.

Lost Cause

This seemingly looks like a lost cause, and political parties doesn’t really view this a worthy cause to pursue, because the notion among most working Danes, is that unemployed are selfafflicted, lazy and fradulent types and companies welcome the endless supply of free labour helping them lower wage-costs.

A newer party, Nye Borgerlige (NB) has expressed a willing to shut the jobnet system down, which annually cost 13 billion DKK to run, this excludes the benefits that pays the unemployed.
What their solutions to ending free labour exploitation of workers to companies is not really clear.

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