Reykjavík Grapevine - 08.05.2015, Síða 8

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Along with tourism, sea-food is the biggest in-dustry in Iceland. For many towns along the coast, it is the reason for
their existence. The salaries paid to lo-
cals by seafood companies fuel the vil-
lage economy. Therefore it is very im-
portant that seafood companies behave
responsibly.
I certainly hope there's no fishy
business. I'd apologise for the
pun, but I'm not sorry.
The particulars of how Icelandic sea-
food companies can behave irresponsi-
bly comes down to the specifics of Ice-
landic fishing laws. Fishing is regulated
according to a system called Individual
Transferable Quota. The government
sets an annual maximum for how many
tons of a certain species can be caught.
Companies can purchase a share in the
total allowable catch which they retain
from year to year.
If there's something that never
has any unintended consequenc-
es, it's a simple system for the
regulation of a complex industry.
The way the system was designed
meant that people could make quite a
lot of money from selling their fishing
quota. Not as much as they would from
actually catching and selling the fish.
On the other hand they would not have
to pay the costs of maintaining ships
and running factories, or pay anyone
their salary. Quite a few businesspeople
closed their companies, sold the quota
rights to businesses based elsewhere,
and left their villages economically
fucked.
Running a company that sustains
a town is nothing compared to
the joy of being rich enough to
make a golden replica of your
penis.
No need to be such a cynic, some of
those businesspeople have vaginas.
The issue is not that they are captains
of indickustry, though there are some
pricks among them. The point is that as
an effect of how the system is designed,
people who own quota rights have al-
most godlike power over coastal villag-
es. Instead of controlling the rain and
whether the harvest fails, they control
which village gets fish. If no fish comes,
people will have to move away.
A sensible system. If history has
taught us anything, it's that hu-
mans with power always behave
responsibly.
To take one example, the village of Flat-
eyri in the Westfjords had a fairly stable
population of over 300 people. Then
the owners of the local seafood com-
pany decided to sell their quota in 2007
and shut down the business. Now the
population is down to about 200. Be-
fore the quota system was established,
a seafood company's assets were main-
ly its ships, factories and other equip-
ment. These are difficult to sell. But a
non-physical asset, like the percentage
of the total amount of fishing in a year,
is just a document that can be sold on-
line. Under the quota system, you can
destroy the economy of an Icelandic
coastal village by sending an e-mail.
It can't be that simple. You
must at least need to send a few
e-mails.
Okay, maybe even more than a few. And
make formal contracts and so on. But it
is still frighteningly easy for a village
with a healthy economy and vibrant
community to become financially dev-
astated on the whim of a few individu-
als. Which is why Icelanders are both
angry about the quota system and fear-
ful of the people who own quota rights.
Will you now tell me about those
cocktaints of industry?
There are too many to go through all
of them now, so let me limit myself to
Kristján Loftsson. He is the Chairman
of HB Grandi, one of Iceland's largest
seafood companies. He and his compa-
ny have been in the news lately for pay-
ing over 18 million euros to sharehold-
ers and increasing the compensation
of the board of directors by a princely
33%. Meanwhile their employees were
offered a measly 3.3% salary increase in
contract negotiations.
The old "nyah nyah nyah, you
can't have what I have" negotiat-
ing tactic.
It did not so much throw fuel on the
fire as throw TNT on the volcano. To
further enrage everyone but himself,
Kristján Loftsson went on television
and defended the decision with all the
tact of a Dickens villain. He even did a
comic impression of an old union lead-
er being perpetually ungrateful for his
salary increase.
No one is as funny as a rich man
making fun of working-class
people.
Incidentally, Kristján Loftsson uses the
profits he gets from HB Grandi to fund
his other, not very profitable business:
Hunting fin whales, an endangered
species. If he were not already cartoon-
ish enough, his hobby is the oceanic
equivalent of industrial elephant kill-
ing. And because of the quota system, it
is very easy for his company to cash out,
shut down the factories, and give him
enough money to buy a golden harpoon
shaped like his penis. But bigger.
8 The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 5 — 2015
So What're These Badly Behaved Seafood
Companies I Keep Hearing About?
Words by Kári Tulinius @Kattullus
Illustration by Lóa Hjálmtýsdóttir
I C E L A N D 4 D U M M I E S
Iceland | Fishy business
OPEN 7-21
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T EMPL AR A SUND 3 , 101 RE Y K JAV ÍK , T EL : 5711822, W W W.BERGSSON. IS
By Paul Fontaine
NEWS
IN
BRIEF
The sage advice to pack clothes
for any weather condition when vis-
iting Iceland is especially applicable
this year, as meteorologists are mak-
ing long-term predictions that this
summer will be cloudy and cold.
So, pretty much like last summer. And
the one before that. On the bright side,
weather predictions beyond the five-
day range are a real roll of the dice, so
who knows? Maybe the glory days of
the summer of 2012 will visit us again.
Pirate Party captain Birgitta
Jónsdóttir told reporters that if she
were prime minister, she would
grant NSA whistle-blower Edward
Snowden asylum in Iceland. The dec-
laration may even be prescient, as the
latest Gallup poll shows the party now
at 30.1%—the largest in the country—
and a new poll from MMR shows their
support is greater than that of the two
parties in the ruling coalition com-
bined. Whether that momentum will
carry over the next two years until
new elections (presuming the wildly
unpopular current government fin-
ishes its term) remains to be seen.
Tourism is a booming industry in
Iceland, and its effects were demon-
strable all month long. A tour guide
has bemoaned the lack of outdoor
toilets in parts of the countryside, as
apparently not enough buses are out-
fitted with toilets of their own. A poll
conducted for the City of Reykjavík
showed that most Icelanders are find-
ing it increasingly difficult to get a
table at their favourite restaurants
and cafés, laying the blame squarely
on tourists for the lack of seating.
However, opportunities abound, as
there are so many tourism-related jobs
opening up that there aren’t enough
Icelanders to staff them all, and so
foreigners are needed to apply. Your
chance to work in a guesthouse in the
countryside awaits!