> Pretty sure Jern og Metall (Metallurgy union) would not have accepted competition at that workplace at that time. :)

While there have at times been overzealous union people and I obviously can't know the conditions specifically at your dads old workplace, closed shops have typically been far more unusual in Norway than e.g. in the US, and the few attempts there have been have increasingly faced legal opposition and are now considered illegal in part based on interpretation of the freedom of association in Council of Europe's social charter from the 1960s. The main exception in the past have been for employees of the unions themselves, and even there closed shops became unusual a long time ago. But of course you won't make many friends at a workplace if you actively place their working conditions and employment at risk.

> Sure, though it comes at a pretty significant cost in terms of efficiency and of the ability of the more productive part of the workforce to generate income for themselves.

Health and safety and the general wellbeing of workers tends to come at a cost, yes, it doesn't come from nothing. The question is not whether or not to do so - not a single country in the world allow employers free reign in deciding workers conditions - but where to draw the line.

So then you have a choice of how much of your own well-being you're willing to sacrifice for the sake of maximising profits for someone else. Of course there is a point beyond which pushing working conditions and salaries up becomes net detrimental. But given Norway tend to rank near the top on almost all quality of life metrics, it does not seem Norway has hit it (and in case you drag up oil: Denmark and Sweden tend to rank equally well)

> Over time, this kind of setup tends to lead to loss of competitiveness, often resulting in fewer jobs / layoffs, lower salaries or to requiring the rest of society to pay subsidies, trade barriers and/or for consumers to pay more for their products.

Come to the UK and experience the life of an average worker here and see how fucked up their situation is compared to the average Norwegian, and see if you consider the trade-off worthwhile. Høyre would be considered far-left extremists by UK standards, with policies in their program more radical than what Corbyn proposed (they support more generous parental leave policies for example, and Solberg stood up for continued government ownership policies that'd see her branded as a communist here). And we live the result. The UK tends to rank well below the Scandinavian countries on most quality of life metrics.

> And maybe worst of all, a society dominated by unions may cause some of the most productive citizens to seek better opportunities abroad ;)

I didn't leave for the salary, and I stayed for family reasons. We need to earn far more here for the same standard of living as in Norway because we need to compensate for a welfare system that is far less generous, despite the fact we on average work far longer hours. Yet the average worker here earns less than in Norway. For me, at a far higher salary than average, it's close to a toss up, but had I been on an average salary I'd be back in Norway in a heartbeat rather than put up with the shitty conditions most people here deal with. For my part, I intend to leave the UK well before I retire, because while money can compensate for the direct impact on me personally, it can't compensate for the negative effect on the society surrounding me.