 He started school at Landås in 1967, and finished school in 1978.He was a carpenter apprentice from 1978 to 1979, and worked within construction from 1978 to 1991, except for a period from 1988 to 1990 when he joined a peace corps for the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation in Kenya.He was then a full-time trade unionist from 1992 to 2005.