Put paid to payrises!

Independent weekly Eesti Ekspress has been joined by a number of other media publications and public figures in calling on Estonia's parliamentarians to stop giving themselves pay rises when they're clearly not doing anything to deserve it. The following is a translation of the text that appeared in the newspaper yesterday.

At a time when even prime minister Andrus "Don't worry, everything's fine" Ansip is talking about belt-tightening, there is a select group of people in our society already living the high life whose salaries are going up yet again this winter - this time by 20 percent! And they'll be going up again in the coming year, and the year after that, and will keep on going up.

We're talking, of course, about the 101 members of the Riigikogu (the Estonian parliament - Ed.), whose salaries are four times the national average. At the beginning of the '90s this kind of pay was justified if normal people were ever to be enticed to enter parliament. But the system has long since become very unfair in the eyes of the majority of Estonia's citizens.

The overweening lifestyle our parliament leads has deepened disillusionment in politics as a whole and is damaging Estonia's reputation. Parties and politicians, wake up and smell the coffee! Agree that things can't go on the way they have been. Figure out a new salary system that doesn't fly in the face of fairness. And if you can't come up with anything yourselves, find some intelligent people who can.

We've had it up to here with party BS and politicians not being able to come to any agreement. For Christ's sake, just do it!

Daily broadsheet Postimees conducted a poll in response to the issue the Eesti Ekspress article raised, asking readers who they thought she be responsible for determining how much the country's parliamentarians get paid. 0.5% said the Riigikogu itself, 3.5% said the president, and the remaining 96% were united in saying the job should fall to an impartial commission. But who appoints the members?

http://www.ekspress.ee/2008/02/28/eesti-uudised/1413-eesti-ekspressi-yleskutse-riigikogu-peatage-oma-taltsutamatu-palgatous

She works hard for the money

In yet another Eurostat report, Estonia has ended up on the podium once again - albeit this time for a good reason. It has taken the bronze in the race to see which member state employs the most women.

Only beaten to the top spot by Sweden and Slovenia, Estonia registered unemployment among 'working-age' women (aged 25-54 for the purposes of this survey) in 2006 of just 14.3%, almost 10% lower than the EU average. The country scored even better in the 55-64 range, coming second.

Unfortunately, on the back of this good-for-equal-opportunities news comes the revelation in a different report of the stark contrast that remains between the amount women in Estonia are paid for what they do and the amount men are paid for doing the same thing: on average, female workers receive 28% less.

Add to this the findings of another report again (this one from Eurofound) that simply working in Estonia doubles your risk of occupational health problems compared to other EU countries and perhaps the country doesn't have all that much to crow about: they might have more than the average number of women in work, but they are likely to receive a third less pay for what they do than the men folk and twice as likely to do themselves an injury in the process.

Living on the gluten & wheat free sundried tomato & basil ciabatta line

Bespectacled Bank of Estonia boss Andres Lipstok, who is currently said to scrape by on little more than 100,000 kroons per month, has endeared himself to the public by claiming that he could quite happily live on 5000 kroons every four weeks, before tax.

In a Q&A with Eesti Päevaleht, Lipstok - who recently made headlines for discouraging people to ask for a pay rise in conditions of runaway inflation - poo-pooed ideas that a man in his position would struggle if his salary were cut by 95%. “Of course I would get by,” he said. “A lot of people in Estonia make do with 5000 kroons.”

While predicting that the average salary in Estonia would catch up to Western levels (roughly 1000 euros per month) by 2010, Lipstok nevertheless warned against it rising too high too quickly. This could hinder the creation of new jobs, he said, and lead to higher unemployment. Nor does he think that basing the minimum wage on the average salary would be good for society: “Because then it wouldn't have anything to do with performance results,” he explained.

What kind of performance do you have to give, though, to earn ten times the average salary?