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Find waiter in benidorm It has almost become mission impossible. Is the problem that you have to pay them more, as argued by Yolanda Diaz? “The minister simplifies everything with a propaganda headlinebut the wages they just rose 4.5% with the new agreement and there are other reasons. To refute the second vice president of the Government, the spokesman for the hotel association of restaurants open, alex fratiniexplains other factors of this problem.
“We are noticing that it is not the salary that holds them back, but the conditions: the hours in the hotel industry do not attract young people and since the pandemic people think more about enjoying life, not about working when everyone is holiday or party”, says this restaurateur.
“And the accommodation is very complicated in Benidorm: now they ask for up to six months deposit in advance to rent, nobody can pay for that, and they only admit people with a permanent contractThey even prefer not to rent to temporary workers, because in the pandemic they have had some non-payment problems, ”he adds.
In spite of everything and with the good expectations for this summer that has already arrived with summer temperatures, in the tourist capital of the Alicante Costa Blanca they are managing as best they can to have the workforce to attend to so many visitors. “The waiters we found live here and are studying, they have relatives or friends and that’s why they have accommodation, many others want to come from outside, but they can’t”, he describes.
And the general spirit has changed, with the perspective of the two years of crisis due to the coronavirus: «We are happy because we are working, these problems are minor, although the hotel business is not valued and consists of being from seven in the morning until one in the morning on a normal day like yesterday, “says Fratini.
The INE and tips
In this context, the words of Yolanda Díaz have gone wrong in the sector, based on simple statistical data that they qualify. “The INE points out that work in the hospitality industry is the least paid, but this is not the case, not at all, not calculated wellbecause it is not done per hour worked, and the tipwhich does not exist in other sectors, in addition to taking into account the part time contractswhich we need at the peak of the season,” says Abreca’s spokesman, on the reasons why taking only a general average distorts reality.
As a claim to the Minister of Labor, the restaurants propose measures to facilitate accommodation and geographical mobility, as well as training. “The training contract is very limitedand now we are being teachers, we pay salaries from the first day when we spend the first two weeks training all day, and sometimes then the waiters have to be changed, it pains me to say it, but some do not know how to turn the change, they do not know count,” he adds.
“Intrusiveness” of the exploiters
Like Díaz, “many people generalize” and put all hoteliers in the same bag of bad payers. We will always defend collective agreementthat is why sometimes we take longer to approve it, so that it is agreed between employers and workers, and it has to be respected, as the vast majority of companies do, but then there is a unfair competition of some that we do not consider entrepreneurs, who pay less, without counting overtime, or days off, “Fratini denounces.
“We consider it intrusiveness and we fight against this, that if it did not exist we could employ more people because we would work more”, he stresses, without losing sight of the fact that, despite these conditions, it will continue to be difficult to find waiters: “With the salary of the agreement or charging something else and the tips , many prefer a shop or a supermarket, with more days off, fewer nights and weekends of work».
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George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism