Spring is the season not only of long weekends in Norway, but of bitter, pointless strikes. Last year, the journalists shut down most of the Norwegian press for a week, demanding, well, an extra vacation week. Tomorrow, there's a fair chance that nearly all the banks in Norway will be closed.

This may sound bad, but in fact isn't, not by itself. Norway is far ahead of most countries in the field of electronic banking. Most services are available online, all banks interconnected. My primary bank, for instance, Skandiabanken, is online only. I can open accounts, buy stocks, apply for loans, everything online. I haven't been to a proper bank for years, except the one I'm hired by, (where, incidentally, I work with online banking services aimed at companies). 26 000 bank employees could go on strike for weeks, and many of us would never notice. Most cash machines would not be refilled, but all shops have card terminals. Some people would suffer, but hey, that's life in a country with legalized extortion for you, and it would hardly qualify as a national crisis.

For some reason, though, the banks themselves have decided to respond to a strike by closing down all the electronic banking services in Norway: online banks, card terminals, everything. The intention is clear - to force the government to intervene, and apply forced mediation. This is fairly standard with all strikes that threaten important services, and will happen within a day or two. The reason for doing this is less clear to me. As far as I know they don't have to shut anything down. These services are maintained by a very small number of independent companies, which are not, according to Digi.no, touched by a strike.

Banking in Norway is, in fact, so fully automated that some banks could potentially do without any employers of their own outside of finance and development, (and most others are close to this), and while these employers will go on strike (or be shut out) as well tomorrow, the systems themselves will work just fine without them. Many of the other 26 000 employers have already been made redundant by technology - only inertia keeps them employed. The employers should welcome an opportunity to demonstrate this. Why aren't they? Beats me - perhaps they consider an immediate forced mediation less risky - but I'll show up at work tomorrow in any case. I'm a consultant, I've got a green card that will let me past the strike guards, and I have a job to do.

(Update: Revolution called off - strike averted.)

Oh well. The strike is cancelled.

Why was the strike cancelled? Did the threat from the banks to shut down systems work?

The parties reached an agreement that was a reasonable compromise. In case of strike, all parties lose (except the union bosses). So, normally, they reach some agreement in the last minute.

The original demand was a flat NOK 6000/year increase in salaries. The final agreement is salary increases from 2100 to 5000; the highest increases to those with the lowest salaries.

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