Facts about ethnicity

The employer cannot discriminate

When you apply for a job, the employer is not allowed to take ethnicity into account. All applicants are entitled to have their application dealt with on an individual basis.

Employers are not allowed to take ethnicity into account in any part of the recruitment process, such as advertising, the application, the interview and when making the decision about who will get the job.

By ethnicity, the law means ethnic/national origin, background, skin colour and language. Differential treatment on the basis of citizenship is not covered by the law, but in some cases it can be included within the term national origin.

Employers must not:

- hire staff on the basis of general assumptions about applicants in the context of ethnicity, for instance that they must have Norwegian as a first language
- exclude applicants who do not have a Norwegian-sounding name
- gather information about the applicant’s viewpoints with regard to religion or cultural questions
The employer must not contribute to anyone else treating or encourage anyone else to treat job applicants in this way.

As a job applicant, you may demand that the employer provides information in writing regarding the qualifications, education and experience of the applicant who has been hired. This also applies to the private sector.

The prohibition on discrimination applies to all types of jobs, full-time, part-time, temporary jobs and internal promotion. The employer is also not permitted to take ethnicity into account with regard to leave and termination of contracts.

If you have experienced discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, you may complain to the Equality and Anti-Discrimination Ombud.

Reasonable cause

For some special positions, ethnicity can be of relevance and provide reasonable grounds for differential treatment. There may be a particular requirement for mastering Norwegian, such as in the publishing industry, even if this will exclude large groups of applicants with other ethnic backgrounds. In such cases the employer may have reasonable grounds for differential treatment when hiring employees.

Working in private homes

The Anti-Discrimination Act applies to all areas of society, apart from family life and personal relationships. Employment of anybody who shall work and live in an employer’s home is considered to be a purely personal relationship and discrimination protection legislation does not apply.

Mother tongue during work breaks

An employer who does not allow employees to speak their own language during work breaks, are discriminating against employees who have a different language than Norwegian. Such a prohibition can be experienced as an obstacle to expressing oneself and as an obstacle to informal human contact.

The Anti-Discrimination Act prohibits discrimination due to ethnicity, national origin, background, skin colour, language, religion and belief system. The prohibition applies to all areas of society. If you are receiving worse treatment than your colleagues because of the language you speak, you are possibly being subjected to discrimination.

Unequal treatment is prohibited unless the employer has a good reason.

Banning the use of employees’ mother tongue in the workplace can in some cases be allowed if the circumstance is specifically assessed and deemed to come under the employer’s right to govern. For instance, if the use of a native language createsmisunderstandings during the work. It is hard to say anything about how far the employer’s right to govern extends.

The Ombud has not processed any complaints about the use of native languages during work breaks. That makes it difficult to make general statements about how far the employer’s right to govern extends.

Have you experienced discrimination due to your mother tongue? Then you can complain to the Equality and Anti-Discrimination Ombud. We enforce the Anti-Discrimination Act.