Reykjavík Grapevine - 10.10.2014, Blaðsíða 19

about all this, because Pétur was very
proud of having Vísir’s presence all
over the country,” he said. Surveying
the workers on the processing line, he
added: “This company does a lot for its
employees. If you talk to them alone,
nearly everybody is happy to work for
Vísir.”
Berglind Jónsdóttir is one such
employee. The 28-year-old Icelander
grew up in Grindavík and has been
working at the Vísir plant off and on
since 2006, doing everything from
gutting and brining the fish to packing
them up in boxes. Both her parents as
well as her brother and sister all used
to work in the factory, too—many Vísir
employees work alongside their family
members, whether siblings, parents or
children. “It’s the best company you
can work for,” she said. “They take
care of their people.”
“A quarter of the
workforce”
Christian Mendoza is more apprehen-
sive about his job. Christian, whose
name has been changed for this ar-
ticle, came to Iceland from the Phil-
ippines seventeen years ago and has
been working in Vísir’s Djúpivogur
plant for around a decade. It’s been
an industrious time for him. Since ar-
riving, he started a family and bought
a home. The prospect of moving to
Grindavík makes him nervous. Since
Christian wouldn’t want to sell off his
hard-acquired real estate, he’d need to
make enough money in Grindavík to
both maintain a property far away and
rent one to live in in his new, if only
temporary, hometown. Such a scenar-
io would only be feasible if the work in
Grindavík were steady enough, some-
thing that no one can guarantee. “If
they promise that there’s a lot of work
for me, then I guess it’s okay,” he said.
Still, he didn’t think relocating was in
the cards for him and his family.
Native-born Icelanders are in the
minority at the Djúpivogur plant,
but many of the immigrants who
work there have been in the country
for upwards of fifteen years and are
naturalized Icelandic citizens. Vísir’s
situation in Djúpivogur is complicated
largely by the fact that most Icelandic
employees in the village own their
own homes, and that most immigrants
are so integrated that they don’t want
to leave. Largely for these reasons,
only twenty of the plant’s fifty employ-
ees will accept new positions in Grin-
davík.
For those who stay behind, the
best-case scenario would be that the
plant finds new owners and remains in
the fishing industry. The municipality
has been investing in fish farming in
recent years. It will take time to estab-
lish itself, but if this sector eventually
takes off, salmon and trout raised in
Berufjörður could be processed in the
factory. It’s important to remember,
however, that Vísir is not just pulling
out of the village; it’s also taking its
fishing quota with it. Without a quota,
fishermen can’t catch anything, much
less dock and process their catch. So
for the building to remain a fish fac-
tory, its new tenants will have to bring
their own quota with them.
Gauti Jóhannesson, a former teach-
er and principal at the local school
who has served as the town manager
for the past four years, put the mat-
ter in numerical terms. “If you take
our whole community of 470,” he said,
“around 70 are retired, 50 are in the
countryside and 100 are school-aged
children. That leaves you with 250.
Then about 50 are off at university,
college or working
away from home. That
leaves you with the
village’s workforce
of 200. What’s hap-
pening with the Vísir
plant affects a quarter
of the entire work-
force. So it’s big.”
According to
Gauti, Djúpivogur’s
salvation lies in so-
cial services. “What
we can do as a town
is continue to provide
good services and
make this a place that
people want to move to and live in,” he
said. The town has an unusually high
proportion of children between the
ages of one and five: Gauti placed the
figure at 8.2%, compared to the na-
tional average of 7.3%. “So providing
good services to families with chil-
dren has been our main goal for the
last few years.” Most of these services
are related to the local school, which
encompasses kindergarten as well
as primary, second-
ary and music school.
Children don’t have
to leave the village to
get the education they
need until they turn
sixteen and go off to
college, something that
can’t be said of every
village this small.
The other great
hope for Djúpivogur,
as it is for so many mu-
nicipalities throughout
Iceland today, is tour-
ism. “Every year we
have more and more
tourists,” Gauti said. “We’re getting
tourists at times where we didn’t have
them a few years ago.”
The idea of transitioning to a tour-
ist economy was met with ambivalence
by numerous workers in the Vísir fac-
tory, however. Guðmundur Helgi Ste-
fánsson has worked at the plant since
2005 and described the company as
a “great employer,” but decided not
to relocate so that he could stay in
Djúpivogur, where most of his family
lives. He acknowledged an increase in
tourism in the village, but wasn’t sure
how smoothly he could transition ca-
reers. “Maybe I’ll get a job in a hotel or
something,” he speculated. “But I’ve
always worked in fish factories. I’ve
never worked with tourists before.”
His preference, he made clear, was to
stay in the same line of work if at all
possible.
When it came to the fate of Djúpiv-
ogur, Pétur wasn’t worried. “I have
no doubt about Djúpivogur,” the Vísir
general manager said. “It has every-
thing a small village needs to stay alive
and grow. So even if you cut the num-
ber of jobs in one factory from 50 to 30,
it’s not going to make or break the vil-
lage.”
Case Study: Breiðdalsvík
Perhaps such a change wouldn’t make
or break a village like Djúpivogur, but
once the question of quota enters the
19
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 16 — 2014
“Maybe I’ll get a
job in a hotel or
something. But I’ve
always worked in
fish factories. I’ve
never worked with
tourists before.”