Norwegian Union of General Workers
trade union in Norway
The Norwegian Union of General Workers (Norwegian: Norsk Arbeidsmandsforbund, NAF) is a trade union in Norway. It has a membership of 33,000 and is affiliated with the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO).
The union was founded on 13 April 1895, by 12 transport workers, as the Norwegian Road and Railway Union. However, the union decided to accept all unskilled workers, and in 1900 became the NAF.
The union was an early affiliate of the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions, and was initially its largest member, with 25,000 members by 1907. However, the federation wished to establish industrial unions, and so numerous industry groups were split out of the NAF as independent unions. The Norwegian Sawmill, Site and Planing Workers' Union was formed in 1911, the Norwegian Union of Paper Industry Workers in 1913, and the Norwegian Union of Municipal Employees in 1920. The process was stepped up in 1923, when the Norwegian Union of Building Industry Workers, Norwegian Union of Chemical Industry Workers, Norwegian Union of Food, Beverage and Allied Workers, and Norwegian Union of Textile Workers were all split out. By 1924, the union had only 5,500 members remaining, mostly in the mining industry and sections of the railway industry. However, it rapidly built up membership in road construction, and by 1939, they formed half of its total membership of 29,000.
By 1996, the union had 32,032 members, of whom 40% worked in the metal industries, 30% in production, 20% in constructions, and the remainder mostly in mining and quarrying, and utilities.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Norwegian Union of General Workers” is trade union in Norway. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Norwegian, Union and General, not as a finished interpretation.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7061302. VIAF identifies the subject as 155381248. The Library of Congress control number is n80166860. 1 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1895, 1900, 1907 and 1911.
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This entry incorporates text from “Norwegian Union of General Workers” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.