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Prime Minister Erna Solberg (H) earns NOK 1.7 million a year. Rødt’s own leader, Bjørnar Moxnes, has an annual salary of NOK 988,000 as a parliamentary representative.
He thinks this is too much, especially when Norway is in the middle of a crisis.
When the new aging state budget is adopted at the Storting on Saturday, he will present a proposal to cut the salaries of the prime minister, members of the government and the 369 Storting politicians by 20%.
The salary cut will apply throughout 2021.
It must be part of the working day
– This year, hundreds of thousands of people were laid off or lost their jobs and lost at least 20 percent of their income, many of them over a long period of time. When the Storting shuts down scheme after scheme for the unemployed, who also had less than before, the least that can be demanded is that politicians join the union, he tells Dagbladet.
They have frozen wages
When the crown crisis hit the country and the economy this spring, Moxnes made the same proposal.
The inspiration was New Zealand, where the government decided to cut their salaries by 20 percent for six months. Rødt’s proposal was rejected.
Proposes a radical pay cut
But in April, the Storting agreed to set up a committee to analyze the salaries of politicians. This came after big differences were noticed in the way politicians are paid and with no common guidelines at the bottom.
While waiting for the report, the Storting has decided to freeze the good remuneration of Storting representatives and members of the government.
I can not wait
Now, however, the committee that was to present its proposal before Christmas has been delayed.
In the crisis we are in, Bjørnar Moxnes believes that it is not enough to wait for them to end.
– The delay in the commission’s report cannot be a pretext to postpone once again the necessary settlement with the unfair salary privileges of the political elite. That is why we are now proposing cuts in the salaries of politicians, says Moxnes, who recalls that the pandemic is not over, despite reports that there will be a vaccine this Christmas.
– The crisis is not over, NAV says that the labor market can only be declared healthy in 2022, the number of unemployed increases again, more and more lose unemployment benefits and next year hundreds of thousands of those who already lost income this year they will receive vacation pay, because the government eliminates vacation supplements. So it is completely unreasonable if the Storting now adopts a budget that aims to preserve politicians’ pay privileges until 2021, Moxnes believes.
– Durable solutions are needed
The Conservatives’ fiscal policy spokesman, Mudassar Kapur, has not responded to what the Conservatives think about it.
The AUF has also previously tabled proposals for drastic cuts to politicians’ pay pools. But Masud Gharakahani of the Labor Party would rather have Red join him to work on his own proposal than a temporary cut now.
– Here we have had a development completely beyond management salaries that must be stopped, because it goes beyond trust in society and increases the differences between people. The elite flee while the common workers keep the account. What we need are durable solutions that change this development, not individual proposals that only last the rest of the year, says Gharakahani.
Rødt should rather support the Labor Party’s proposal to freeze politicians’ salaries and a total review of executive salaries for politicians and for top managers in state and state-owned companies, he believes.
The Labor Party submitted a proposal for this past week, but it was rejected.
