Day 19

Early start this morning, lucky for me all I had to do was go out the front door – Jorgen picked me up in his car (SAAB 95 Aero wagon).  We drove up to Helsingborg and picked Henrik up at the station before driving onto the ferry.  The ferry from Helsingborg to Helsingør is the only one left between Sweden and Denmark – the trip takes a little over 20 minutes.  You used to be able to catch a ferry from Malmo (and even Landskrona way back in the day) but that one stopped when they built the Öresund Bridge in 2000.

Made it to the Ruko offices by about 8.30am.  Ruko is to Denmark what Lockwood is to Australia.  The site we were visiting was their head office and also housed their manufacturing and warehouse.  The Entrance Systems people only took a small part of their office space and used completely separate computer systems/network etc.

Was taken on a quick tour of the factory and warehouse Theis, one of the Ruko IT guys.  It was amazing how similar their operation was to ours in Australia.  They make padlocks, mortice locks and door furniture (handles etc.) the same as we do at Lockwood.  They even make the fancy door handles they had on the toilets at Head Office in Stockholm.

 

They kind of look like mini lightsabers!

Spent an hour with Theis, talking IT mostly, before heading to the canteen for lunch.  On the menu today was a salmon and parsley pastie with rice and hollandaise sauce.  They also had an extensive salad bar, from which I chose potato salad, corn kernels and cold roast lamb with tzatziki.  It was awesome!  Afternoon tea was, believe it or not, Danish pastries.  They call them ‘wienerbrød’, which translates to ‘Viennese bread’, and they’re good.

Over lunch I learnt that Henrik only works a four day week at the moment.  It’s part of his paternity leave, which they get HEAPS of in Sweden.  Here’s how it breaks down:

The couple gets 450 days between them, paid at about 80% of their usual rate.  They each have to take a minimum of 60 days and the rest can be taken by either of them at any time for 6 years after the child’s birth.  On top of this they both get an additional two weeks leave immediately following the birth!

To top it all off Swedes get at least 5 weeks of annual leave – some government workers get 7 weeks – and, if you work for ASSA ABLOY, flexi-time at work.  Meaning you clock in and out each day and can bank up hours of ‘extra’ time to use as leave or get paid back in cash!

Talk about a sweet deal.