What lies behind the luxurious and idyllic facade of Greece's tourism industry? The answer is that tourism consists another field for monopolies' profitability, based on unpaid workers, layoffs, unsourced workers, starvation wages, lack of collective agreements etc.
This is the actual meaning of "economic growth" that the SYRIZA-ANEL government, as well as the New Democracy and the other bourgeois parties, promote.
Even if thousands of tourists arrive in Greece every day, hundreds of employees work daily to the tourism industry with humiliating salaries and exhausting shifts that last from dawn till dusk. The average - daily room rate on all 4-5-star hotels is equal to the salary of a waiter! In a tourist country like Greece, where 25 million of tourists are expected this summer, hotel workers cannot afford a decent vacation and relaxing period. This is Capitalism.
On July 20 workers on Hotel-Tourism-Catering in Greece are going on Strike against the worsening of the working conditions and demand the reinstatement of Collective Contracts for the whole sector, especially the big, 5star hotels, owned by big multinational corporations.
PAME (All-Workers Militant Front), the forces of which actively support the preparation of the strikes, inform and participate in the initiatives for the success of the mobilization, calls all labour unions to express their solidarity with the strike of the Hotel-Tourism-Catering workers.
The Unions’ call to the strike follows:
Workers in tourism, hotels and catering industry in Greece
Cooks, waiters, maids, cleaning personnel, salesmen, receptionists, travel agents, and all other employees to hotels, catering companies, restaurants, etc
We cannot stand anymore the starvation wages, with no collective agreements. Working non-stop overtime shifts, without insurance and social security and sometimes even without getting paid for months.
Dozens of trade unions of tourism, hotels & catering industry from all over Greece, are calling you to join and protest with us:
ENOUGH!! ON JULY 20TH WE GO ON STRIKE
- The “fairytale” of the SYRIZA Government and employees that all workers in tourism benefit from the growth of Tourism in Greece does not convince anyone of us who suffer from their policies.
- They lie when they claim that we are working, that we are well-paid employees and we work under descent working conditions.
The reason is that the workers in tourism & catering industry in Greece, not only suffer from unemployment, but also are part-time workers, poorly paid- if not unpaid- and our health is brutally abused to their modern 5star hotels!!!
Even worse, we live the exploitation daily to the chain catering companies, where we get hired & fired in a blink of an eye, when workers cannot work under extreme pressure.
We will not remain silent!
Hundreds of us work only on seasonal jobs. Many work only 3 days per week.
At the same time, other colleagues have to work non stop for more than 10hours per day as “outsourced workers” through outsourcing “slave-trade”companies.
Young people that now work first time in tourism sector, full of dreams, end up sleeping in containers during the tourist season, working for free in order to “get experienced”.
And if by chance they are paid something, that is not enough, not even for their transportation from/to the working place. On the same time, the situation for the employees with contracts is not much better.
Nowadays Greece faces a unique growth, with an income exceeding every year €15 billion coming from our job while most of us do not have the necessary to survive. While welcoming 30million tourists every year in a country with more than 10.000 hotels and hundreds of restaurants, café, bars, very few of us have ourselves the “luxury” to go on holiday with their families.
This is the tourism they want to impose, a tourism that destroys & vanishes every single small working place and businessman who tries to compete the big business group of companies. This is the development they want to bring everywhere. And this is the truth.
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| Workers at Athens Ledra Hotel. Athens Ledra, one of the biggest 5-star hotels in the centre of Athens, suspended its operation just on the beginning of summer high season, end of May 2016. The owners of the hotel, who became richer, all these years that tourism is growing in Greece, literally abandoned the 230 employees without salary for more than 3 months. The employers decided to invest their funds to other business activities (constructions, energy etc), where the government grants are bigger. Pure capitalism. |
WE CANNOT STAND THIS ANYMORE.
- We must take over.
- We must raise our voice.
- We must strengthen our resistance and our demands along with the trade unions that care about the workers and their rights.
ORGANIZE OUR FIGHT:
- Through a massive participation to the strike, in order to impose to the employers to accept collective agreements, all around the country
- By demanding to live and work in a descent way, with a salary enough to cover our needs
- By demanding the abolition of any new way , which the employers find, every now and then, in order to impose cuts to our salaries
- By gaining, through our fight, protection & insurance measures for the unemployed colleagues and their families, during the entire duration of the unemployment
- By demanding the abolition of the outsourcing companies that act as modern “slave traders”, in order all of us to have job with rights.
- By fighting for human working conditions, health and safety in the working place
We shall take initiatives in order to inform all our colleagues around Greece for the demands we have and expose the employers and the extreme exploitation we’ ve been through We shall become better on revealing what is their “growth”, which steps on us and our lives for their profit. We must demand our growth, which will bring a life with dignity and rights for us and our families, for everyone. We must fight for our lives, in order to be able to go on holidays, enjoy cultural activities and recreate ourselves, not by buying all these as a luxury, but as a common right being deprived by the majority of the people today
With The Class Trade Unions On The Front Line
We Fight For Our Needs.
July 20 National Strike In Tourism.