Honest hard workers, clean and quick to learn: About volunteer work in Iceland

Abstract

Since recently, the Icelandic labour market has changed, which can be linked to an increase in foreign employees. Foreign volunteers are not included in numbers of foreign employees but the labour market participants argue that their recruitment is a breach of the collective bargaining agreements. The aim is to examine whether the concerns of the labour market participants about breaches of the agreements are justified. To address this question, we analyze the tasks the volunteers should perform, the workforce requested and what conditions are promised. Data was collected the 27th of February 2017 and the same day 2018, from the websites www.workaway.info and www.helpx.net. Totally, 244 advertisements in 2017 and 295 advertisements in 2018 were reviewed. The diverse tasks required were associated with economic activity in various ways, for which according to labour market rules, participants should be paid minimum wages in line with each profession. A high percentage of jobs listed included tasks related to farms and almost one third was linked to tourism. The results call for a discussion of the status of the labor movement, how key concepts such as work, leisure time, volunteer work and tourism are defined, and the boundaries between them.