The Hotel and Extrahotel Association of Tenerife, La PalmaLa Gomera, and El Hierro (Ashotel) has taken a step forward following the massive demonstrations on April 20th against the current tourism model, where one of the main demands was a greater and more equitable distribution of the wealth generated by the engine of the regional economy. Just as the various organizing organizations of the 20A protests threaten a new demonstration after the summer, hoteliers in the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife presented an offer yesterday in favour of “social peace” in which they commit to doubling the planned salary increase for this and the next two years (2024-2025) in the sector’s collective agreement.
Ashotel’s proposal to the unions, which were announced yesterday by its president, Jorge Marichal, and the vice president Victoria López, would mean that workers under the sector agreement would see their wages increase by a more than considerable 9% by the end of 2025. According to the terms agreed when the current agreement was signed, the salary increase for the 2024-2025 biennium was set at 4.5%, so if Ashotel’s proposal is accepted, the increase would indeed be double the stipulated amount. This 9% wage increase would be distributed in two increments of 4.5% in the current and next years. To get an idea of the magnitude of the proposed salary increase by Tenerife’s hoteliers, it is worth noting that someone currently earning 1,500 euros per month, for example, would see an increase of up to 135 euros per month by the end of 2025. In other words, an extra salary of 1,620 euros per year.
The leaders of Ashotel, Marichal (who is also president of Cehat, the Spanish hotel employers’ association), explained that the negotiating committee has held several meetings with the unions, especially with UGT and CCOO, the two major national unions that, although they are a minority in the hospitality sector – together they have five representatives in a table of 15 delegates – filed a case concerning the personal ad personam bonus, a concept that was accepted in 1995, the year in which seniority was removed from the Workers’ Statute and transformed into this personal complement for each employee.
The board of directors of Ashotel, who met on Thursday in an extraordinary session, agreed to make this salary increase proposal public and is confident that the union’s side will consider it appropriate. This financial effort will mean around one hundred million Euros more over these two years in the wage bill for the 31,850 members of the staff of accommodation establishments in the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
Marichal: «We are not deaf or indifferent to the 20A, that is why we are making this proposal today»
[–>
«We are not deaf or indifferent to the 20A, which is why we are here today making this proposal, which joins other initiatives already underway; I believe that we are mistaken if we stigmatize a sector that is not guilty of the social unrest in Canarias», said Marichal, who insisted that the real causes of the consequences resulting from the increase in the Islands’ population must be sought, which has gone from 1.6 to 2.2 million residents so far this century. “This population increase has not been accompanied by the necessary infrastructure: neither educational, health, road, nor housing…,” he stated. “It seems that tourism has unjustly become a sweep-up that collects all the dissatisfaction in society, when tourism is not the problem, it is the solution,” he added.
Ashotel already expressed some months ago that they shared some of the demands of the 20A, such as housing access problems or daily mobility difficulties. In fact, and in order to contribute to finding solutions, Ashotel proposed several initiatives. Regarding housing, for example, the hotel employers’ association offered last April to build houses at fixed prices to rent to employees. And in relation to the mobility issue, they also launched a pilot project in May for on-demand buses to transport hotel staff to their workplaces.
Ashotel, the Restaurant and Leisure Business Association, and Base Unionists (BU) signed the provincial hospitality collective agreement for 2022-2026 in September 2022, with a total salary increase of 10.25%. The Employers’ Association and BU did not manage to bring UGT and CCOO on board with the agreement. The current agreement included the following annual increases for the 2022-2026 period: 3%, 2.75%, 2.5%, and 2%. The negotiating table was set up in June 2022 with the usual structure of 15 members from the employers’ side and 15 from the union side – ten from BU, three from CCOO, and two from UGT-.
