[QiuCIOdO]

Riot Police Resign: Iceland Leads the Way, Again

Posted on: September 29, 2011 12:44 AM, by Steinn Sigurðsson


On saturday Alþingi, the Icelandic Parliament, reconvenes.
Protests are planned on the square outside, and there are suggestions that a new wave of protests may build up, similar to the "Household Revolution" back in the winter of 2008.

But there will be some missing from the demos.


On Wednesday, at informal meetings, a number of Icelandic Police, both from departments in the south west, where Reykjavík is, and in the north, declared that they would not be serving on the Riot Police squad.

As I understand, call up to riot squad duty, is essentially, non-mandatory overtime shift work, beyond normal duty shifts. A large fraction of the police trained for this duty, possibly the majority, are declining the duty.

This could be quite amusing, especially if it starts a trend.
Iceland does irrationally pride itself on being trend setting, on a world wide basis.

It'd be nice to claim that this was done as a matter of principle, a grand gesture of solidarity, but the real reason seems to be that the recent arbitration ruling on pay increases was not satisfactory to the majority of the police, in particular they feel their pay has slipped relative to other professions, and bonuses and supplements for seniority and special training are inadequate.

On an unrelated note, the police will apparently not be providing an Honour Guard escort for the setting of Alþingi, though this has, officially, nothing to do with any union dispute over pay or benefits... a suggestion was made that the Scouts provide a guard, from the Rescue Squad, I thought the Cub Scouts might make a better escort, but apparently they don't want to do it either.

Interesting times. OK so it's not 100% solidarity with the people, but damn, it is (sort of) a step in the right direction.