[ad_1]
From 2019 to 2020, commercial and maritime brokers had increased their average monthly salary by NOK 17,000. That makes the red politician Mímir Kristjánsson react strongly.
– It is scandalous, these are professions that have incredibly high salaries from before, even in a time of crisis for the country, they further strengthen their salaries, says the leader of Rødt’s group in Stavanger, Mímir Kristjánsson to Nettavisen.
On February 8, 2021, Statistics Norway presented statistics on the median salary for the vast majority of occupations.
At the top of this list, with an average monthly salary of NOK 122,030, were commercial and maritime brokers.
But these brokers are not only the occupational group in Norway with the highest salary. They are also the occupational group with the highest salary increase.
In 2020, his salary increased by more than 16 percent, which corresponds to 17,000 crowns per month.
Fredrik Steinrem Edelmann from Statistics Norway says it’s about transportation employees, transportation agents, raw materials and energy, and more.
– It is a fairly small group that considerably increases their salary. This means that the average also goes up a lot, he tells Nettavisen.
It’s all about bonuses
Edelmann further says that the increase is mainly due to bonus payments.
– If you look at the median salary without the bonus payments, the industry has received a significantly smaller increase than what is shown in the median salary. We have to count it as an average of all the months of 2020, he concludes.
One person who is opposed to the big increase is the red politician Kristjánsson. He thinks it’s strange that this industry earns so much more than last year, while many others in the country are struggling.
– We have 200,000 unemployed in Norway who are struggling, also a small part of the population has a lot of bonuses, it’s completely strange, Kristjánsson tells Nettavisen.
Kristjánsson says it is special that they get bonuses given the time our country is around, he thinks this points to the need for more equalization.
Also read: Here is the average salary in 350 occupations
“They are not the most socially critical professions”
Rødt’s group leader continues to defend the professions that were lower on the list, the ones he believes deserve more.
– If the pandemic has shown us something, it is that the professions that tend to earn the least are those that are socially critical. Why should those in the shop, for example, earn only a fraction of what they earn at the top?
Kristjánsson believes that it is not fair that people with “normal” jobs earn many times less than commercial and maritime brokers. He says that professions such as brokers make their living by being intermediaries in trade and that they are not exactly the most socially critical professions.
Hans Nicolai Edbo, director of the Norwegian Naval Brokers Association, does not agree that these are not socially critical professions, on the contrary.
– Ship brokers and agents work to ensure the transportation of food, raw materials and finished products that are of socially critical value. In 2020, we have all worked in very difficult conditions with both local and national quarantine rules that have at times been in conflict, he writes to Nettavisen.
Morally correct?
Edbo says that it is important to look at the industry median salary and not the average established by Statistics Norway.
– The bonus is part of the remuneration in the shipping profession, and the bonus paid in 2020 is based on the results of 2019 and therefore should not be linked to Covid-19 and earnings in 2020, he concludes.
Mímir Kristjánsson emphasizes that there is nothing wrong with being one of those who earn so much, but that it is rather a problem of society.
– There is nothing wrong with the morale of people who earn so much, everyone accepts a salary as high as we can. There is nothing wrong with that, but something is wrong with our society and that we reward other professions, which are necessary in their own way, three times more than ordinary, decent and important jobs, says Kristjánsson.
End the interview with a final question:
– Are those to whom you deliver children in kindergarten much less important than those at the top of the pay scale? It’s hard for me to understand that.
Advertising
Extreme electricity prices, but 2.3 percent of customers can applaud
