29.12.2006
JOB-SEEKING DEPUTY FOR
JOB-SEEKING DEPUTY FOR THE HANDICAPPED ON SUDURNES http://www.netsaga.is/media/files/ss%20dh%20eu-ekki%20vera%20hr%C3%A6ddur.mp3
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).
WHAT IS MY RIGHT?
After my forklift-accident in Heimir ltd. as mentioned before our financial matters became worse every week, for we had very limited income.
There wasn't any light in the dark until about three years later.
Then my fianceé hears about a carpenter living in the village of Selfoss who had received compensation in money, because his collar-bone was fractured in a work-accident. She is also told that he had contacted an insurance-mediator who had used his special knowledge to assist him.
We were very surprised and happy of course to hear this because we'd never heard that these mediators existed and that they were some kind of intermediate links between the victims of accidents and the insurance companies.
This kind of ignorance is probably very common in Iceland.
These insurance-mediators are seemingly very shy people because it was by sheer co-incidence that we heard about this way of compencation.
My dear woman discovered where this mediator was to be found and contacted him.
She got a good reception and was told that I should immediately order an appointment with a doctor he recom-mented so I could get a valuation of my disablement so that he would have something to work with.
I had a dread for visiting doctors once again, besides that I did not believe that there was much chance of getting any compensation.
I had more or less come to terms with my physical and mental condition.
But at last I gave in to the steady incitement of my dearest woman.
-We can always hope that we might get some insurance-money, she said to me. It might make it possible for us to enlargen our lodgings?
Those years our income was very low, it didn't even reach minimum wages for taxation.
Two hours per day I worked at the library cutting from the newspapers all articles concerning our area, the Sudurnes and glueing it on white, large sheets of paper in addition to puny unemployment compensation.
She was working half-time as a nurse's aid.
We lived in a four room flat and the two sons slept in a bunker, so it was becoming too crowded.
Because of the age-difference;
born 1976 and 1981 it was becoming difficult for them sharing the same room much longer.
The time and the requirements had certainly changed a lot since my father's youth;
he and his nine brothers and sisters had to sleep in a small elavated flat along with their parents on the Hafnargata down by the seafront.
That appartment was a lot smaller than ours in Hatun.
