Gabríel Benjamin

Experience in community engagement

For the past year, I have been an alternate on the Board of VR. I am the Chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Committee of VR and have led the formulation of a campaign that will soon be launched to increase respect and tolerance towards foreign members and queer people in the labour market. I also serve on ASÍ’s Equal Rights Committee and am an alternate on the Committee on Criminal Activities in the Labour Market.

I am a shop steward at Neyðarlínan and was previously a shop steward at the Efling office. In my work at Efling, I assisted many people on difficult cases and helped them seek justice after violence and rights violations by employers. Still, I must confess that I did not fully understand what it means to be a victim in such matters until I experienced it myself when the entire staff of Efling was dismissed in an unprecedented collective dismissal. The labour movement proved to be weak in the face of violations within its own ranks, but with the support of the VR office, I took my case to the Labour Court, which ruled that my dismissal was illegal with a precedent-setting ruling.

Main focuses

This year, Board elections will take place at a time of turmoil and uncertainty. My main focus is on the general quality of life of VR’s members. I believe it is important to protect and improve the purchasing power of our people, but also to use the power of the union to ensure that wage term improvements are not immediately taken away by economic mismanagement. I am particularly concerned about the circumstances of VR’s foreign members, as many of them are in a poor situation. A new report by ASÍ states that of the wage claims of ISK 250 million in 2022, half were made for foreign members, despite the fact that they are only 16.8% of the country’s population. I want to remedy this evil by further focusing on workplace monitoring by VR and ASÍ and by ensuring fines for wage theft so that organised crimes against working people have consequences. I have also worked on formulating proposals for a blacklist of employers who are exposed to organised wage violations or wage theft. In this way, I wish to inform members and the community by identifying companies that skirt their legal and ethical obligations.

Article from candidate

The Labour Movement’s Turning Point

We, the people of the labour movement, have reached a turning point. Interest rates are at record highs, it is more difficult for young people to acquire housing and the transfer programme has been starved so that it does not ease the burden on those who need it. While inflation is decreasing slightly, there are still many warning signs.

The ideology behind the new collective wage agreements is to act as an equalisation tool. A part of that ideology is to review and refinance child benefits, housing benefits, rent benefits and interest benefits and to hedge workers against economic fluctuations. Many households have already had to cut spending and modify loans and have reached their tolerance limit. Workers are at risk of being priced out of their own jobs and homes due to unreliable economic management and a decline in purchasing power.

The new Board will need to be in combat mode from day one to secure a collective wage agreement, if it has not yet been reached, or to follow it up and ensure that the costs of the new transfer programme are not passed on to the workers themselves or lost in cuts. I am ready for that task.

Addressing systemic issues

For the past year, I have been an alternate on the Board of VR and I have actively participated in the Board’s committee work. I was elected the Chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Committee of VR and have led the formulation of a campaign that will soon be launched to increase respect and tolerance towards foreign members and queer people in the labour market. Unfortunately, it is a well-known fact that minorities tend to experience increased discrimination and harassment in the workplace and are more exposed to violence and bullying. That’s why I think it’s important to shed light on this problem and get our members to join us in tackling it.

In my work on ASÍ’s Equality Committee, I have lobbied for re-evaluating jobs within women’s professions and supported the Women's Strike and ASÍ’s Women’s Conference. On ASÍ’s Committee on Criminal Activites in the Labour Market, where I am an alternate, I have advocated for the strengthening of workplace monitoring by the trade unions and for measures to improve resources for our members who experience the worst wage violations.

I have also tried to work on the necessary reforms of a systemic problem of the labour movement. As the situation is today, there are consequences for taking property and money from other people, except if the property is wages from an employer. This problem has long been known within the labour movement, but the staff of the wage and salary departments are faced with lack of resources in the face of persistent offenders who repeatedly pay their staff reduced wages or no wages at all.

There are a number of companies in this country that are operated under a new identity number at regular intervals and have the Wage Guarantee Fund pay the unpaid wages of their employees. Those employers have kept the profits but let the public pay the costs, often without changing the name of the company. Another group of employers repeatedly gets away with not paying their employees or significantly reducing wages with false and unrealistic costs. This form of operation often works because only a portion of the victims seek help from their union, and the unions have no authority to initiate wage claims on their own. When wage claims arise, they are not accompanied by any compensation, and the employer therefore only has to pay unpaid wages. Therefore, an employer who does this can easily profit from all those employees who do not seek their rights.

Many ideas have been proposed in this regard, but I believe that three parallel approaches can reduce this social evil. First of all, VR and ASÍ need to put more emphasis on workplace monitoring, map out where the problem lies and communicate more information regarding this to our members. Second, fines must be ensured for wage theft to prevent employers from profiting from this organised criminal activity. Third, a blacklist of employers who are exposed to organised wage violations or wage theft must be established, and I have been working towards this for the past year. With that, I want VR to inform the public about those employers who use such tricks and distort the assumptions of fair competition.

Foreign members deserve equality

Last autumn, ASÍ published a landmark report called The Icelandic Labour Market – Foreign Workers and Criminal Activity in the Labour Market, which is a continuation of a report from 2019. In the original report, salary claims from four member associations of ASÍ were reviewed, but in the updated report, data from eight companies that made 342 wage claims for ISK 250 million, was reviewed. Of those wage claims, more than half were made for foreign members, despite the fact that they were only 16.8% of the country’s population at the time.

The same report states that the participation of immigrants in the labour market is higher than that of Icelanders, but despite being almost 17% of the population, they were 21% of working people in the country. This participation and hard work are vital for the Icelandic economy. Entire industries could not function without this participation, and some communities would quickly shrink or disappear if immigrants were not there to build them up.

Despite being a mainstay in Icelandic economy, our foreign members have not been given enough care and attention, and their rights have not been adequately guaranteed. The measures I discussed above, workplace monitoring, fines and employer blacklisting, will benefit all VR members but will also be a big step towards equality for our foreign members.

It is in our common interest within VR that everyone is treated with respect in their jobs and can live with dignity. It is in our common interest to eliminate discrimination. It is in our collective interest that no group is left behind and that we all benefit from our hard work.