Wage-Theft
“They are being paid the lowest wage, and doing all like reception, housekiping,
breakfast, like 12 hours and being paid 8 or less. Or not being paid for the red
days.”
"Throughout the months, the managers and owners lied to us that there was no
money and that they had nothing to eat.”
“They didn’t pay overtime hours to most of my colleagues and they were scared
of asking for those because they were saying it’s a good job and only a few krones,
it doesn’t matter.”
“They do pay their staff, but: 1.They do their best not to pay sick days (give wrong
information, or say they are not supposed to—it has happened to many people
there. I had a message from the manager that they can pay for the doctor but
they would not pay the day—asked for it once in my whole employment period.)
2.They do their best to ‘forget’ about bad weather days when the place is closed
when you were supposed to work. I got it paid three months later after having to
remind them all the time.”
“They don’t pay the right salary and let you do office work but only pay a workers
salary”
Wage-theft can take many shapes, and is often misrepresented, misindentified or mislabelled.
Wage-theft is not only about not paying salaries; it is also about paying them incorrectly.
In Iceland, wage-theft often translates as:
Wrongly counting hours
Delays with payments
Wrong wage category (not taking into account education and/or experience)
No legal notice time
Overall ignoring collective wages agreements
Not paying properly:
- evening rate
- week-end rate
- night rate
- overtime
- holiday rate
- sick days
- breaks
- trials
- orlöf (holiday fund)
- pensions fund
- union fees
- taxes
Aspects of wage-theft is by far the major issues reported by workers in their testimonies.
Apparent incompetence, repeated mistakes, miscalculations is overwhelming in the reports.
Several testimonies reported that employers justified delays and other forms of wage-theft by saying that :
“It’s a mistake”

“Business is struggling”
A business struggling or miscalculations are the responsibility of the owners and DO NOT JUSTIFY wage-theft.
Emotional and Financial toll of wage-theft

Constantly asking for wages to be paid or paid correctly, repeated delays, has a massive toll on workers’ lives
Many reported difficulties paying rent, fear of homelessness, stressful work environement, traumatic responses to interactions with management, overall hopelessness

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