Directors in the public housing companies raise salaries of more than one and two million kroner.
This is shown by a survey carried out by Jyllands-Posten and the media house’s Library and Research. The wage level meets with criticism from experts and tenants.
82 out of 151 housing directors have stated their salaries. 13 earn more than DKK 1.5 million, and of these, six earn more than DKK 2 million all inclusive – including pension, car and telephone.
Kurt Klaudi Klausen, professor of public organization and management at the University of Southern Denmark, believes that the area is characterized by “unusually high” director salaries.
– There is no doubt that the market for executive salaries in this field has developed historically in a way where you align yourself one after the other and have put the market mechanism out of force, he says to Jyllands-Posten.
The same message comes from Per Nikolaj Bukh, professor of financial management at Aalborg University, who estimates that salaries over two million kroner, as a starting point, should not be found in the public housing sector.
That at least 13 directors raise an annual salary of more than DKK 1.5 million, infuriates Bodil Kjærum, chairman of the Danish Tenants’ Associations:
– It is completely unheard of that they get such high salaries. It is on a par with municipal directors in the largest municipalities, who have much more versatile and complex tasks than directors in housing companies, she tells Jyllands-Posten.
Of the housing directors who have stated their salaries, Jens Elmelund, director of KAB, Copenhagen’s Almindelige Boligfælleskab, is the best paid with a salary of just over DKK 2.4 million. To that he says:
– We are dealing with a very complex field of work, which lies in the borderland between a very regulated area, a voluntary and social area and a construction sector with some extremely high wages.
– When I place the directors of the large companies in that triangle, I think that the salaries are reasonable, he says to Jyllands-Posten.
Aarhus Municipality’s supervision of housing associations has previously interfered with two directors’ salaries of DKK 2.0 and 1.8 million, respectively, which the municipality found too high, and since then the municipality has demanded transparency about salaries.
The housing associations’ interest organization, BL, finds the salary level appropriate, says director Bent Madsen to Jyllands-Posten.
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Source: The Nordic Page