ECOCLUB Monitoring™

EFFAT, the European Federation of Food, Agriculture and Tourism Trade Unions, elaborated a set of proposals to combat labour shortages in Tourism, following the pandemic when about a tenth of tourism jobs, around 3.6m, were lost. The Federation explains that "short-time work, temporary lay-offs of workers and quest for quick profits of many hospitality-tourism companies have led to further precariousness of jobs in the sector and are the reasons why most of the workforce has left the sector and never got back."

A position paper "Fight labour shortages in hospitality-tourism by improving the attractiveness of jobs" was adopted at the latest EFFAT Executive Committee meeting in Vienna on 13 and 14 June 2022.

The 18 proposals are:

1. Put workers and quality jobs first
Workers have to be put at the centre of all measures. In a customer-oriented service sector like
hospitality, workers are at the frontline, they are the most important asset, and decisive for success
and viability of any business. Workers need to be valued and respected and provided with the
adequate means and conditions to provide quality services.

2. Improve working conditions and pay
In order to recruit and retain workers, the creation of full-time permanent employment must have
priority, and all jobs must provide decent working conditions, wages people can live on, adequate
social protection, proper vocational education and training offering personal development and career
paths, and the respect of workers’ rights.

3. Strengthen collective bargaining
Trade unions and employers’ associations, knowing the situation in a sector, and being committed to
fair and comprehensive negotiations, are the best situated to find tailor-made solutions for current
and future challenges. Sectoral collective bargaining must be strengthened, including capacity building
for social partners in countries where collective bargaining is less developed or has been weakened.
The application of collective agreements has to be made a prerequisite for subsidies, state aid and
participation in public procurement.

4. Give workers a voice
To ensure that the proposed measures are successful, it is of utmost importance to give workers and
their representatives a voice. Workplace representation via elected or designated workers
representatives and works councils is key. Workers’ rights to information, consultation and
participation must be ensured at all levels, at company, local, national and European level, e.g. in
European Works Councils.

5. Enable workers to have work-life balance
Hospitality-tourism jobs are often carried out at times when others enjoy leisure time or are on
holidays. “Unsocial” working hours, such as evenings, nights, weekends, should be kept to a minimum
and distributed fairly amongst all staff, respecting as much as possible workers’ availabilities and
preferences.

6. Ensure regular and predictable working time
Reliable work plans must be drawn up and communicated as early as possible, respecting existing
working time legislation and limitation. Short-notice changes should entitle to extra allowances. Hours
worked must be recorded comprehensively. Any overtime or extra work must be limited, to protect
workers’ health and safety, and be compensated with free time as soon as possible.

7. Rethink outsourcing / subcontracting / franchise
Companies should reconsider the core tasks in hospitality and keep as many of them in-house, as own
staff is more familiar with and loyal to the company and provides a higher quality of services. Current
business models in hospitality-tourism, such as outsourcing, subcontracting or franchising, should be
strictly regulated to avoid that they lead to more precarious working conditions and undermine
workers’ rights.

8. Keep daily room cleaning in hotels
In hotel housekeeping, daily room cleaning should stay the norm, to guarantee hygiene and safety
standards, and to make housekeeping jobs stable. Hotels should abstain from giving guests a “green
choice” to opt out from daily room cleaning, under the pretext to protect the environment by saving
water and detergents, which are actually intended to save costs. Guidelines should be elaborated for
affiliates and other organisations to only use hotels for events and travel that respect these principles.

9. Improve vocational education and training
Quality vocational education and training and continuous re- and upskilling are key for a skilled
workforce and high-quality services in hospitality-tourism. Ambitious qualification and training
strategies should be developed, in close cooperation between companies/employers, trade unions,
social partners, governments, and education establishments, anticipating future skills needs.
Qualification and training must be made accessible to all hospitality-tourism workers, also those in
non-standard forms of employment. Qualification and training measures at company level should be
planned, implemented, and evaluated in close cooperation between managements, workers
representatives and trade unions, and it should be ensured that acquired qualifications and skills are
transferable between companies.

10. Promote apprenticeships
In many countries, dual systems of vocational education and training, combining school education and
in-company training, have been successful, giving young people profound vocational qualifications and
providing them with an excellent entry into the labour market. Apprenticeships or similar initial
vocational training systems should be implemented in countries where they do not exist yet. Full
compliance with the “Council Recommendation on a European Framework for Quality and Effective
Apprenticeships” must be ensured.

11. Ensure the hospitality sector is a safe place to work
The specific physical and psychosocial risk factors of work in the hospitality sector, e.g. repetitive
movements, carrying and lifting heavy weights, cuts and burns, trips, slips and falls, hot and cold work
environments, dangerous substances (e.g. cleaning agents), high noise levels, stress, long and non-
standard working hours, unpredictable working time, etc., have to be addressed with clear health and
safety protocols, risk assessment and training, in close cooperation with workers’ representatives and
trade unions. This should include e.g. the provision of height-adjustable beds to facilitate the work of
housekeepers, a study on workload, as well as safe transport between workplace and home, for
workers who have to work early or late hours.

12. Guarantee workplaces free from sexual harassment and violence
To protect hospitality workers from exposure to sexual harassment and gender-based violence, e.g. by
superiors, colleagues or guests, companies have to draw up clear zero tolerance policies, including
awareness raising, risk assessment, training, reporting and solution procedures, involving workers’
representatives and trade unions.

13. Ensure gender equality and diversity
The hospitality-tourism workforce is made up of people with a vast variety of ethnic and cultural
backgrounds, with a particularly high share of young and female workers in most countries. Women
are often concentrated in the lower paid and lower status jobs. It must be ensured that nobody is
discriminated against based on gender, race, colour, national origin, age, sexual orientation, disability,
religious belief, political conviction, employment status, etc. Gender equality has to be promoted, and
equal opportunities with regard to employment, wages, qualification and training, career perspectives,
leadership positions be guaranteed.

14. Protect and organise seasonal and migrant workers
The hospitality-tourism sector provides many job opportunities for seasonal and migrant workers.
Seasonal workers must be given jobs with adequate wages and social security coverage, decent and
affordable accommodation, the right to be rehired over successive years, and access to trade union
counselling services. The possibility to establish a European social action fund for seasonal workers,
with an antenna in each Member State and the joint management by trade unions and employers'
organisations should be explored.
To facilitate the integration of migrants into the labour market, specific programmes such as the
Swedish “Fast Track” scheme, a cooperation between public employment services, employers and
trade unions, training newly arrived immigrants for jobs in hospitality, building on each individual’s
education and experience, should be promoted.

15. Ensure fair digital and green transitions
The climate crisis and increased automation and digitalisation will continue to fundamentally
transform the hospitality-tourism sector. To anticipate changes and to facilitate adaptations, workers
representatives and trade unions must be involved in the planning, implementation, and evaluation of
all transition measures, to ensure that no one is left behind.

16. Promote social labelling
To enable customers to choose hospitality establishments by assessing social criteria, in particular
decent working conditions and respect of workers’ rights, social labelling campaigns such as Fair Hotels
and Restaurants should be further developed and promoted. Moreover, efforts should be made that
all classification and labelling initiatives (e.g. stars, ecolabels) take the quality of employment into
account.

17. Foster year-round tourism
Tourism should be developed as a year-round economic activity. A well-functioning, expanded
tourism, developed in cooperation with local communities, would reduce the negative impacts of
seasonality, facilitate better employment, help reducing labour precarity, and enable recruitment of
workers locally and from outside a region/area as well as their retention.

18. Rebuild tourism with a more sustainable and socially responsible vision
For too long, travel and tourism have been pursuing permanent growth, short-term financial interests
and maximisation of profits, leading to low-cost models, little investment in the workforce, and
growing precarisation of employment. Future tourism must be built on new paradigms, striving for
economic, environmental, and social sustainability. Tourism should pursue e.g. more proximity-based
tourism, reduction of seasonality, quality of services, employment stability, investments in human
capital, qualification and training, reinvestment of profits to ensure sustainable growth, innovation
around fair digital and green transitions, and a better share of benefits between tourism businesses,
destinations, local communities, tourists and workers.

During the pandemic, Tourism workers abandoned their poor quality jobs in droves. These proposals by EFFAT could somehow improve working conditions and attract some workers back to the sector, but even though they are modest, most will be probably ignored. The key for truly quality jobs in any case is workplace democracy and workers' control of the means of tourism production.