The 65,000 hotel workers in the province of Tenerife will have a salary increase of 10.25% in the next four years. This is the main consequence of the entry into force of the new agreement for the hospitality sector, which was agreed on July 30 and has just been signed by the hotel management association of the province of Tenerife (Ashotel), the Association of Restoration and Leisure Entrepreneurs (AERO ) and Grassroots Unionists (SB). The Kellys, in addition, will be able to retire early at 58 years of age.
The 2022-2026 four-year agreement involves annual increases of 3%, 2.75%, 2.5% and 2%, with which Ashotel highlights in a statement, “despite the situation of uncertainty in the face of a scenario with difficult forecasts, due to the crisis situation throughout Europe, the annual increases of the previous regulatory framework are maintained. Among the main novelties, an additional linear increase of 15 euros in the base salary for all workers is approved the first year. In addition, taking into account the experience of the years of the health pandemic, circumstances of force majeure that may occur during the validity of this collective agreement may determine the suspension of the annual salary review obligation.
“This new framework provides labor peace in a time of uncertainty”
This collective agreement will benefit 65,281 professionals of the two hospitality subsectors: accommodation services (hotels) and food and beverage services (bars and restaurants), according to the latest data from job recorded by the Canary Islands Institute of Statistics for the second quarter of the year. Of this total, 28,175 provide their services in hotel and non-hotel establishments. These registered employment data represent, despite the two harsh years of the pandemic, an increase of 2,000 people compared to the second quarter of 2018, reference data when the previous agreement was signed.
Likewise, it is agreed that the temporary contracting in the company may not exceed 10% in relation to the discontinuous and indefinite permanent contracts, excluding from this percentage the substitution of vacations, the substitution of workers with the right to reserve the job and the Temporary contracting to attend to occasional, foreseeable circumstances that have a reduced duration and are limited in time, not exceeding 90 days in the calendar year. After the approval of the labor reform, the contract par excellence in hospitality companies is the indefinite one (fixed or fixed discontinuous) and the eventual ones are subject to appraised and demonstrable assumptions.
“The new collective agreement gives us the stability we need”
The agreement also includes a specific article referring to the functional mobility of the staff of the apartments department, in which the function of restocking the minibars, the withdrawal of room service and the cleaning of common areas is eliminated. On this last point, functional versatility within the area of floors and cleaning may be agreed between the maid and the cleaning assistant, which will be agreed between the worker and the company.
Another novelty of this hotel industry agreement is the early retirement initiative for chambermaids at the age of 58, a proposal whose legal mechanisms are included in the Workers’ Statute and the General Social Security Law and which Ashotel already He has been studying for years. It is an approach that must now be analyzed in companies and that arises based on the high cases of temporary disabilities of the kellys.
“The agreement to promote the early retirement of housekeepers at 58 is fundamental”
In addition, the companies included in the agreement will not hire or subcontract other people for the services of restaurants, bars, kitchens, reception and floors. On the contrary, it can be done with accessory professional activities, such as security, gardening, animation, technical maintenance, first aid and specialized cleaning. Likewise, those special services such as weddings, commemorations, banquets or attention to congresses and meetings may be.
Jorge Marichal, president of Ashotel, highlighted “the importance of a normative framework such as this, expired the previous agreement, that brings labor peace and that comes precisely at a time of economic uncertainty, due to the energy crisis in Europe due to the war in Ukraine». Ramón Fariña, president of the Association of Restoration and Leisure Entrepreneurs, expressed his satisfaction with an agreement that he considers “positive for all parties”. “It was a big responsibility after a difficult time, after the pandemic and the current generalized crisis scenario, but despite the increases in operating costs, this agreement gives us the stability we need.” The president of AERO added that he hopes to maintain this level of collaboration between companies and unions for the continuous improvement of the sector.
“We reject it because it gives the company freedom to modify the working day for organizational reasons”
Manuel Fitas, general secretary of Sindicalistas de Base, emphasized the two fundamental commitments: «The first, the agreement to promote the early retirement of housekeepers at 58 years of age; the second, another great agreement, to continue working these four years towards a system of single salary tables, instead of the system that has been operating in the province since 1995 and that we all know by salary agreements ».
CCOO distances itself from the agreement
CCOO, one of the unions that participated in the negotiation of the new collective agreement for the hotel industry, distances itself from the agreement. It ensures that “it maintains a model of salary discrimination between professional groups, maintaining individual negotiation in the workplace, where the salary agreements that have already been sentenced by the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands will be maintained for four more years.” CCOO demands “the elimination of this model, strengthening salaries in categories IV and V where the largest number of professional categories reside.” Borja Suárez, General Secretary of Services, is “against functional versatility for the chambermaid category, understanding that this harms the most feminized department.” The union is also against the specifications in the restoration, “where the agreement gives the company freedom to modify and distribute working time for organizational reasons, saying goodbye to the reconciliation of family and work life” .
