The chairperson of Iceland’s largest labour union contends houseware store Bauhaus is not interested in discussing the finer points of a wage dispute that has management asking employees for “overpaid wages”.
As reported, many current and former employees of Bauhaus have been contacted by management recently, and informed that they were paid too much money from April through July 2012. Management has requested that employees pay this money back.
Commercial and service workers union VR have tried to contact the company on the matter, without results. The chairperson of the union says Bauhaus has no right to ask for the money back.
“As this [wage overpaying] was not corrected right away, the responsibility lies with Bauhaus,” Ólafía B. Rafnsdóttir, the chairperson of VR, told Vísir. “They cannot ask employees for this money a year after the fact.”
Ólafía contends furthermore that Bauhaus has been unresponsive to the union. “Bauhaus didn’t want to work on this with us,” she said. “So we felt it necessary to send out a general announcement. We want to encourage employees to learn what their rights are with us. We are a union, and we fight for our members.”
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