SA-Business Iceland (Samtök atvinnulífsins) is a service organization for Icelandic businesses and negotiates collective agreements with unions on wages and working conditions on behalf of its members. A business becomes a member of SA by joining one of SA’s six associations. SA and its member associations include about 2,000 businesses and account for about 70% of all salaried employees on the Icelandic labour market.
The Icelandic Federation of Trade (FA-Félag atvinnurekenda) is a trade association that represents companies involved in most types of business and trade, importing, exporting, wholesaling and retail distribution and negotiates collective agreements with trade unions on behalf of their members.
The state. It is stated in article 3 in the CAPS Act from 1986 that the Minister of Finance and Economic Affairs holds the collective bargaining negotiation mandate on behalf of the Icelandic government. The Minister appoints a special committee to negotiate on collective agreements with the trade unions on his behalf. The wage negotiation process is split in two. First, there is a central contract between the union and the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs, where so-called frameworks are defined. In the second stage the members of specific unions in each workplace agree upon, with the head of each institute, how the contract will be applied to that particular workplace, based on the broad definition given in the central agreement. Thus, an institutional agreement (stofnanasamningur), is made within each institute with each union operating in that institute. This institutional agreement is considered a part of the collective bargaining agreement.
The municipalities. The board of the Association of Local Authorities in Iceland (Stjórn Sambands íslenskra sveitarfélaga) has the mandate to negotiate for collective agreements on behalf of municipalities in Iceland, except for the city of Reykjavik. The municipalities do not have the afore mentioned system that applies to the state, the institutional agreements. The wage negotiating process therefore remains centralized and applies to all Icelandic municipalities except for one.
The city of Reykjavik. As a single employer, the city of Reykjavik has the mandate to negotiate collective agreements with the trade unions the employees are members to according to the CAPS Act. The Major of Reykjavik city appoints a special committee to negotiate on collective agreements with all the trade unions on his behalf with one exception. The board of the Association of Local Authorities in Iceland has the mandate to negotiate on behalf of the city of Reykjavik with the Icelandic Teachers’ Union (KI).
