The board of Efling today published the following resolution:
Raises in the contract of the SGS federation are, in the view of Efling, insufficient for workers in the capital area and the Southeast of Iceland.
The erosion of purchasing power in 2022 is not corrected in the agreement. It will also not replicate, in the coming year, the purchasing power increase that was seen in the 2019 collective agreements. This estimate is based on the current inflation projections of around 6%.
Another thing not taken into consideration is the fact that in 2019, when the last agreements were signed, GDP growth was only around 2.4%, while today, it‘s closer to 7%. There is much more to go around now. Workers should get their share of this enormous growth.
The raise that the new SGS contract provides is greatest for those workers which have worked at their company the longest. Efling members have generally worked for a short time at their company and would get a lot less out of the SGS wage table adjustments than workers in the countryside. Fisheries workers are also getting a better deal out of this new contract than others, but that group is mostly found outside of the regions covered by Efling in the southwest.
Finally, the cost of living is much higher in the capital area, especially housing costs. A new contract for Efling members must take that into account.
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See also a more detailed analysis of the SGS contract, including a comparison to the 2019 agreements, in Stefán Ólafsson‘s piece.