Madrid (EFE) of professionals to serve.
The imminent arrival of this holiday has fueled the complaint of the hotel industry regarding the lack of staff, an endemic problem that, during weeks like this, forces hoteliers to “remove tables” or reduce, in order to meet their demand despite the deficit room or kitchen staff.
A couple of weeks ago, the proposal of the Hospitality of Cádiz employers to hire a contingent of Moroccan workers to alleviate the lack of waiters in Spain in the high summer season already caused a stir a couple of weeks ago.
It rains on wet because last summer, the first without sanitary restrictions, half of the vacancies in the hotel industry were left empty and two out of three businessmen said they had difficulties finding employees beyond the high season, according to a survey by their employers.
What about employment agencies?
In Seville, the director of Adecco Hostelería in Seville, Rafael Toribio, affirms that this Holy Week they have more than 200 applications from companies in the hospitality sector and that 70% of them will not be covered.
Toribio confesses that there is a “terrible deficit” of personnel in the hospitality industry and, in part, he attributes it to conditions that are highly marked by seasonality.
The director of Hospitality in Spain, José Luis Yzuel, complains that “employment offices do not provide people” available to work in the sector, and defends that the conditions of the contracts are “exhaustively complied with”.
Less staff, less tables
Despite the “record figures” that the sector is going to achieve this week, the president of Hospitality in Spain acknowledges the problem of “lack of personnel” for these dates, which will force hoteliers to “adjust schedules and offer ” to solve the difficulty.
For example, in Alicante, forecasts point to 90% full in the bars, an occupation that they will not be able to attend to because “there is no staff”, as explained in statements to EFE by the vice president of the Provincial Association of Hospitality Entrepreneurs. from Alicante (Apeha), Irene Mas.
The search for these professionals is “very complicated”, a “very serious problem” that runs throughout Spain, which pushes hoteliers to find ways to adapt to it.
Readjustments in Libranzas
Inland, in Soria, the member of Tourist Accommodation of the Soriana Association of Hospitality and Tourism (Asohtur), María Victoria Marco, laments that, to adjust to the lack of personnel, they will have to “free” when “another one comes once the downturn” in affluence.
In addition, the fact that it is a peak of two public holidays plus a weekend makes it difficult to find such short-term solutions and puts the structural problem facing the sector on the table.
The other side of the coin
The Comisiones Obreras union, for its part, denies that there is any problem of lack of personnel in the hotel industry and criticizes the working and salary conditions in which the workers find themselves.
The union has resorted to Social Security affiliation data to demonstrate the non-existence of this problem, figures that, according to what they have indicated, show that in 2022 there have been 1,352,782 employed workers hired in the sector, which which exceeds the average affiliation of 2019 by 0.53%.
Split shifts, difficulty in reconciling work and family life and the absence of weekends to rest are the “poor” working conditions that waiters face and that pushes them to “choose to work in other sectors”, they have indicated. from the union.
All this drives the turn of a two-sided coin led by hoteliers -who denounce the lack of staff- and the staff themselves -who claim better conditions- in a problem that, foreseeably, will explode with more force with the arrival of the summer.
