Reykjavík Grapevine - jun. 2023, Side 4

The Reykjavík Grapevine 7 / 23 4
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V O L C A N O
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The Reykjavík
Grapevine
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Catharine Fulton
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EDITOR
Art Bicnick
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Iryna Zubenko
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The Reykjavík Grapevine is
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WORDS Catharine Fulton
IMAGE Art Bicnick
Here’s a question for any
residents reading this issue: how
much have your wages increased
in the past seven years? If your
answer isn’t, “well, as a matter of
fact, they’ve roughly doubled,” we’ll
venture to guess you’re not a parlia-
mentarian.
That’s right, Heimildin is reporting
that once a scheduled 6% - 6.3%
pay boost for the top tier of the
country’s civil servants takes effect
on July 1, the salaries of Iceland’s
parliamentarians will have roughly
doubled since the summer of 2016.
That means Prime Minister Katrín
Jakobsdóttir will soon be earn-
ing 2.6 million ISK per month (ca.
$18,500 US or 17,400 euros). The
prime minister in 2016 – one Sig-
urður Ingi Jóhannsson – made a
paltry (by comparison) 1.365.000
ISK per month. Not going to lie, we
wouldn’t turn up our nose at Sig-
urður Ingi’s 2016 salary.
Seeing that good’ol Siggi is still in
parliament, he’ll soon be pulling a
bigger pay cheque. The base salary
of a member of parliament is soon
to be 1.431.000 ISK per month. MPs
then get extra dosh for serving
on committees, which you’d think
would just be a basic part of their
job description as elected officials,
but then you’d be wrong. The base
salary of government ministers is
going up to 2.372.000 ISK come
July 1.
WHAT’S GOOD FOR THE
GOOSE
It’s pretty rich (pun intended) that
some of the very same career poli-
ticians telling working class people
in this country that increased wages
and increased spending are driving
inflation are making absolute bank.
If higher wages are what’s driving
inflation, then shouldn’t government
officials do their part for the econo-
my and their countrymen and admit
they have enough as it is.
Yes, the pay increases are man-
dated by law, but I’m pretty sure
the prime minister and minister of
finance at the very least know a guy
who knows a guy who has the power
to change the law.
To compare and contrast a little, the
median salary of workers in Iceland
at the close of 2022 was 775.000
ISK, according to Statistics Ice-
land. That means half of all working
Icelanders earn less than that per
month. While the salaries of parlia-
mentarians has doubled since 2016,
the median wage for everybody else
has increased by 58%.
To be fair, I’m no stranger to steep
increases myself. My mortgage pay-
ments are up 45% in just the past
year. Ouch.
IN OTHER NEWS
A veritable who’s who of Icelan-
dic celebs will gather outside the
Smekkleysa record store in Hjarta-
torg on Saturday, June 3 to urge the
well-paid government to take action
against whaling. With the whaling
season slated to begin later in June,
Björk, Högni, Hera Hilmars, JFDR,
Guðmundur Arnalds and other
guests throw their weight behind
that cause and longline fishing.
The event gets at 14:00 with a pro-
cession from the old harbour to the
square outside Smekkleysa. Signa-
tures will be collected to present to
Minister of Food, Agriculture and
Fisheries Svandís Svavarsdóttir and
Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir.
And the Young Environmentalists
and the Nordic Youth Biodiversity
Network will announce their joint
lawsuit against the government if
the fishing licence of Hvalur Hf. is
not revoked immediately. The fish-
eries minister said in late may that
there was no legal basis for revok-
ing Hvalur’s fishing licence for this
summer.
It bears mentioning whenever
whaling is in the news that it is not
a traditional or historic practice
of Icelanders. Only one company,
Hvalur Hf., hunts whales in Iceland
and actually runs its operations at
a loss.
What The News!? Don’t Hate The
Players, Hate The
Game
Icelandic parliamentarians have no choice but to accept
a hefty pay raise