Seville, (EFE).- The hotel industry, a sector of weight in the Andalusian economy with some 216,000 workers, has gone in the last fifteen years from having become an employment refuge for those laid off from construction when the financial crisis broke out in 2008 to have in the last two years a lack of personnel, especially waiters.
This debate has been opened this week by the Cadiz hotel employer, Horeca, with its proposal to organize “contingents” of students from the sector in Morocco to make up for the lack of local professionals in bars and restaurants during the high season.
In statements to EFE, the Adecco service director in Andalusia, José Antonio Salgado, explained that the hospitality industry was a sector hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic and many workers took the opportunity to relocate to other activities such as logistics, transport and industry, to which is added the fact that it is a very seasonal job and that its working conditions have historically been precarious.
According to the person in charge of Addeco, in the hotel industry in Andalusia there is a lack of qualified personnel but not basic or unqualified workers and, in fact, the profiles most in demand by the market are waiter assistants, kitchen assistants and cooks.
These last profiles require training and experience and, therefore, it is even easy for them to choose where they want to work, indicated Salgado, who specified that the Adecco human resources group works above all with qualified hotel staff for hotels with four and five stars.
Between 1,500 and 1,800 euros per month
In his opinion, the solution to the lack of waiters should not be sought outside of Spain, but would be achieved with more stable contracts and labor improvements, that is, with higher quality employment, although he has pointed out that in recent years progress has been made in reducing precariousness in this activity.
The working conditions are included in the provincial hospitality agreements and the average salary of a full-time room waiter, including extra payments and supplements for transportation, clothing, maintenance, seniority, among others that also differ between provinces, ranging from 1,835 euros per month paid in Malaga to 1,492 euros in Huelva.
In Seville and Granada, the salary set by agreement for this professional category exceeds 1,700 euros per month; in Cádiz it is established at 1,652; in Córdoba at 1,579 euros; in Almería at 1,505 euros, and in Jaén at 1,503 euros.
The Social Security affiliation statistics show that in Andalusia there are 216,370 workers registered in this sector, made up of 65,584 companies, and of which 104,827 are women and 100,473 are men, according to data provided to EFE by the federation of social security services. CCOO-A.
Breaches of the agreement, according to unions
The head of hospitality and tourism at UGT-A, Estrella Salas, has maintained that the hospitality industry has thrived since the financial crisis of 2008 by having been a refuge sector for construction workers who were laid off when the real estate bubble burst and as businessmen “played with that need, precariousness has been promoted against professionalism.”
Now the situation is different because there is employment in other activities such as logistics, transport and industry and the workers have changed a precarious job for one of better quality and more stable and, although they have admitted that there are problems to cover job offers for waiters, he has assured that “it is not so serious”.
In this sense, she has asked the businessmen to analyze why the majority of the students of the hospitality schools, such as the one in Cádiz, choose to go out to work, to which the UGT leader responds that they do it because here ” they prefer hiring unqualified personnel with whom they can bypass certain remuneration conditions and schedules”.
For the head of UGT, the proposal to hire migrants with the “excuse that there are no waiters” is “unspeakable” because what they are looking for is, in her opinion, “to take advantage of and abuse the need for a job that these people have ”.
Thus, he has remarked that businessmen would find labor and waiters in the hospitality industry and, specifically, waiters, “if they recognized the professionalism and met the agreed conditions” in the agreements, since he has denounced that the reality is very different because they are hired for fewer hours and work more but are paid less than what is established in the agreement.
ERTE during the pandemic
In the same sense, the secretary of union action of the CCOO-A Services Federation, José Antonio Frejo, has spoken, who has summoned the employers of Cádiz to “instead of looking for labor through the back door, make them their associates faithfully comply with the hospitality agreement” since “they do not cheat with four-hour contracts, I pay you for six and you work ten”.
In this sense, he recalled that the hotel workers and waiters were disappointed when the ERTE was applied to them during the pandemic because they verified that they did not receive seventy percent of their salary but much less since they had been paid part of their salary in black and this had an impact on lower social security contributions.
This contributed to their seeking to relocate to other, better-paid and more stable sectors, according to the CCOO leader, who has made it clear that there is no lack of labor because “people are at home collecting the 400-euro salary” but rather They have gone to other activities or abroad with better working conditions.
“If the employers faithfully comply with the agreement that they themselves signed, they would make it more attractive for young people to work in the hospitality industry,” the CCOO leader stressed. EFE