After a series of strikes, reported in last month’s newsletter, a wage deal was reached on 28 October that will cover large parts of the public and private sector. Workers organised large-scale industrial action over the last months, demanding pay hikes in order to maintain purchasing power. Wages went up twice as much as in neighbouring countries, but inflation increased three times as much, leaving Icelandic worse off than their Nordic peers. An alliance of public and private sector employers, as well as the SFR Union of Public Workers, the Union of Nurses’ Aides and the Police Federation of Iceland signed an agreement effectively tying wages to the inflation rate. The agreement runs through 2018 and will both guarantee stability in term of purchasing power for workers, as well as avoiding a situation in which wages raise faster in some sectors than in others.
English: http://icelandreview.com/news/2015/10/28/unions-strike-deal-state
For more information, please contact the editor Jan Cremers, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) cbn-aias@uva.nl or the communications officer at the ETUI, Mariya Nikolova mnikolova@etui.org. For previous issues of the Collective bargaining newsletter please visit http://www.etui.org/E-Newsletters/Collective-bargaining-newsletter. You may find further information on the ETUI at www.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net.