A woman working 80% in home care at Reykjavík city, with nearly 30 years’ experience, gets just about 220 thousand per month. Her son, who has just begun working, was hired by an electronics store. He gets higher pay than his mother from day one. Can anyone explain to them why her work and experience is less valuable than an inexperienced clerk’s? The home workers in Hvassaleiti were ready to fight for better conditions when Read more…
“After working nearly 30 years I get just 250,000kr in pocket for working 7 hours a day. Of this, 240,000kr goes into rent!” The woman who said this started working in kindergartens 17 years old. She now works at Múlaborg, which Sólveig Anna and Ragnar Ólason visited today. What does she have left after paying rent? Ten thousand! This is not just her reality. It’s also the daily life of most of those keeping the Read more…
There were heated discussions in Sólveig Anna and Ragnar Ólason’s visit to the neighbourhood upkeep centre in Njarðargata yesterday. The centre was one of the workplaces where Reykjavík city trialled a shorter working week. People here were very happy with it and agreed that the measure was very successful and important to them. They reported their satisfaction in survey after survey, which the city administration made them answer both before and during the trial. The Read more…
Yesterday Sólveig Anna and Ragnar Ólason visited the Reykjavík city workers in domestic service at Vitatorg. They talked about the current state of negotiations with the city and the condition of workers. Our members explained the increased strain they’re working under. More and more tasks are piled on them without corresponding increases in pay. It’s completely clear that care workers can’t always simply be forced to work harder and run faster. Domestic service workers are Read more…
“We love our job. That’s why we’re still here. It’s definitely not for the money.” These are the words of an unskilled kindergarten worker spoken during a visit by Sólveig Anna and Ragnar Ólason yesterday. This woman has worked at the same kindergarten for nearly three decades, but she doesn’t even get 300.000kr after taxes per month. This forces her to work two side jobs to make ends meet. She, along with her colleagues with Read more…
The state and Reykjavík city have agreed to a down payment of 105.000 kr for Efling workers on August 1. The negotiating team of the union of municipalities, SÍS, has banned other municipalities from doing the same. Yesterday, a letter from the team to the municipal councils was published in the media. In the letter, the reason for the ban is said to be the referral of the negotiations with Efling and other SGS unions Read more…
On May 1, the new collective agreement with SA gave Efling members in the private market a 17.000kr/month raise, plus other benefits. Some employers have tried to escape those raises, such as Árni Valur Sólonsson, owner of CapitalHotels. He terminated the wage section of all his employees’ contracts and told them they’d be rehired at uncertain terms, designed to counter the raises. Efling considers this to be illegal on several counts. Firstly, this breaches the Read more…
Efling has demanded a meeting with Halldór Benjamín Þorbergsson, the director of the business cartel, SA, in the offices of the state mediator, due to noncompliance with the new collective agreements. The case arose after the mass termination of wage terms by Árni Valur Sólonsson, a hotel manager, immediately after new agreements went into force. In the letter of termination this is said to be “with the aim of reducing labour costs”, due to “foreseeable Read more…
Reykjavík city Efling has met with the city’s representatives over several month. No progress has been made to talk of. The negotiation committee of Efling does not have much hope for the approach seen at meetings so far. Strikes have begun. State A shorter working week has bee discussed. The unions emphasise an actual shortening of working time in these agreements. A trial project by the authorities has shown that well-being, health and work environment Read more…
Half of the Efling membership is from abroad. They often work under the management of Icelanders who prefer to speak with staff in Icelandic. “We have seen how very important information gets communicated to staff in a language they simply don’t understand,” says Viðar Þorsteinsson, managing director of Efling. “This winter we attended a staff meeting where a high-level manager announced a mass layoff in Icelandic, which nearly everyone in the room didn’t understand. The Read more…