"The tourism and food sectors employ the largest number of people without agreements and the employees in Greece work under the worst conditions of flexible labour relations among the European Union countries," said the president of the Federation of workers in tourism and food industry Panagiotis Proutsos. Despite the expectations for full hotels, the contracts of many employees were not renewed at the beginning of the year, while others were forced to accept reduced salaries. This was announced at a press conference held by the Federation of workers in the tourism and food industry.
The positive forecast for this summer is for an increase in the number of tourists by 10% as well as an increase in the revenue in the tourism sector. During the Easter holidays 80% of the hotels were full and the number of tourists in the summer is expected to rise significantly because of the riots in North African countries that were destinations for cheap holidays.
According to the 2010 statistics, over 60% or 322,000 people out of 550,000 workers in the tourism sector have no health and pension insurances. The data show that a total of 130,000 people from the food industry and 98,000 employees at the hotels have been registered in the health insurance fund IKA during the summer last year, they stated from the Federation of Workers in the tourism sector in Greece. There are 10 000 hotels in Greece and it appears that only 9 people in each hotel have been insured, said Panagiotis Pruotsos. They stated from the Federation of employees in the tourism and food industry that they are ready to protest during the summer, if the owners of hotels and restaurants that hire seasonal workers do not renew their contracts by June 15.
Despite the programs in support of health insurance contributions, the reduction of the value added tax to 6.5% and other financial incentives they receive from the state, the employers pay their employees the lowest wages stated in the national collective agreement, say the employees. According to the Federation, the owners of hotels and restaurants have found other loopholes to "pretend" to hire staff for training but actually they hire young unemployed people under the age of 24 years and pay them 60% of the salary without labour and insurance rights. According to the enforced ministerial decision, hotels and restaurants should take students to train them through establishing initial contacts with the relevant schools, not to employ them through labour offices. The students should not take jobs. They rather should learn and be paid 60% of the lowest wage determined by national collective agreement. However, there is no control over the entire process and thus employers can easily go beyond the legal procedure by "renaming" unemployed youth without the necessary education to "trainees".
The demands of the Federation of employees in tourism and food industry are to stop the dismissals as well as any kind of flexible employment arrangements and seasonal workers to be hired again to work. Following the vote on the new law on firm labour agreements, the workers in the tourism want branch agreements to be applied, not business contracts to be signed with the excuse that the country is in crisis. Since the largest number of employees without agreements is in this industry, they insist on strict application of the labour laws as well as on regular inspections and control by tax and labour departments.
The proposals of the Federation of employees are to establish rules for the allocation of duties according to specialty, to modernize schools for tourism and graduates of these schools to have priority when recruited. Furthermore, they propose the establishment of a tourism observatory, involving both the social partners and the government.
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