29.12.2006
JOB-SEEKING DEPUTY FOR
JOB-SEEKING DEPUTY FOR THE HANDICAPPED ON SUÐURNES
During the spring of 1986, I applied for a job that was an innovation in the country;
finding jobs and distributing them to disabled people, a position that had been publicized as being vacant, in spite of my earlier rotten luck when applying before.
In my total despair I had applied for all kinds of office-jobs;
some that I had perhaps a reasonable chance of getting, e.g. on the Naval base and others like the position of the director of a poor law district in Gardur, a small village near Keflavik, which perhaps wasn't so very unpractical considering who received this respectable job.
But it wasn't such a minor scandal in my family, when the names of the applicants appeared in the local papers.
The one who received the blessing has a shorter school attendance than I do , but has in spite of that since
reached the highest office in my hometown.
Perhaps because he's a member of the right party, The Independence Party, the most popular one in Iceland.
His success-story is admirable, to say the least;
when he was a little child his father died from him and his siblings, but his poor mother managed to raise the children up with her little earnings.
And he has with his persistency become the mayor of one of the most populated towns in the country.
To my immeasurable joyment and amazement I received the job of job-searcher, probably because I had taken the issues of the disabled on my arms and written a few articles that appeared in Vikur-frettir.
July 15. 1986 I began working as a deputy of job-seekment for the disabled on the Sudurnes.
Formally as an employee of The Union of Communities on the Suðurnes, S.S.S., but was in fact under the guidance and administration of the Regional Office of the Affairs of the Handicapped in the Reykjanes-District which is located in Kopavogur.
I signed a legal employ agreement in S.S.S.'s office on July 24 1986.
In the agreement it was concluded that it was just a temporary employment until the end of the year, but that time was supposed to be sufficient before deciding, whether there was a foundation for employing a deputy of job-seeking in the district.
The Trade-Union in Keflavik provided the working conditions in its building on Hafnargata 80, free of charge.
It also leant me an old office-table and some chairs.
A telephone was installed and I purchased portfolios, paper and writing utensils.
In addition to this S.S.S. gave the office an old electric typewriter.
Now the office was able to get to work and my first job was writing an article which appeared in all the local papers, where I informed people about its wherabouts, when it was open and the telephone-number.
For the first days no customer visited the office, but a few called me on the phone.
Primarily to gratulate me on the new job, but also the people that had contacted me after my articles had appeared in Vikur-frettir a few months earlier.
I got a list of all members of Sjálfsbjorg (Self-perservation), wrote them an introduction-letter and informed them of my wish that they would contact me if they wanted assistance getting a job.
I also made a contact with a great number of firms, but it did not give much results to begin with.
Into the new weekly local newspaper Reykjanes I wrote the article:
"Employment Seeking and Distributing for the Disabled Begins" (19)
and into
Baejarbot from Grindavik:
"Nearly Three Hundred People on the Sudurnes on Wellfare" (20).