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  Decent work in hotel and tourism services: the role of social dialogue

Sally PAXTON - Executive Director, Social Dialogue Sector, International Labour Organization, Geneva, Switzerland

 

Ladies and Gentlemen,

First of all I wish to thank the Swiss Federal Government and in particular Mr. Keller from the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs for inviting the International Labour Organization to be represented at this important Conference.

It is a special pleasure for me to address an audience related to this area of Geneva and Haute Savoie in neighbouring France as this is the place of the ILO Headquarters. The Director General of the ILO, Mr. Juan Somavia, has asked me to transmit his warm greetings to you and to let you know how much he enjoys the excellent relations of the ILO with its host community. He very much regrets not to be able to come himself. He wishes you a successful conference.

In this region, nobody needs to be reminded of the importance of the tourism industry.

It is important for the economy as a whole but especially for the employment of many thousands of workers, not only in cities like Geneva, but also in the countryside for winter and summer activities.

The tourism industry seemed to be somehow undervalued by decision makers on economic planning. Only its sudden downturn subsequent to the tragic events of 11 September made everybody notice how many jobs were at risk. It was estimated that a loss of 10 per cent in worldwide tourism would mean that almost 9 million workers could become redundant, out of the 200 million workers employed in and around this industry.

As soon as the first figures on lay offs appeared post September 11 th , the ILO convened the social partners and government representatives concerned with the tourism industry for an urgent meeting. The ILO was responding to a request by the social partners who wanted to get together in order to better understand the crisis and to exchange views on how to ease the effects on enterprises and workers of the industry. Here are some of the key findings : -.Different from earlier crises of the tourism industry, which were of local or regional dimensions only, the 11 September events affected the industry at a global level.

The hotel and tourism sector provides a major route for the socially excluded to enter the workforce and employs a large proportion of vulnerable groups such as women, migrant and young workers.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) represent more than 80 per cent of the industry in many countries and lack the resources to survive a prolonged downturn.

In addition to these findings, the social partners agreed on a series of recommendations addressed to governments, to their affiliate organizations and to the ILO.

The primary recommendations to governments included proposals for training measures for unemployed workers to ease their quick reinsertion after the crisis is over, as well as tax moratoria for enterprises to immediately alleviate their current cost burden.

The social partners committed themselves to seek ways to minimize employment losses through mutual agreements and to reintegrate workers laid off during a period as a results of the crisis. They also decided to develop joint approaches to governments for action to reduce the impact of the crisis.

The social partners also requested the ILO to start monitoring the sector continuously and keep the public informed on trends in employment and working conditions – a process which we have already started. The ILO was also asked to encourage the participation of the social partners in dealing with the crisis.

This example shows that a quick response was possible thanks to social dialogue.

Workers and employers representatives of the industry came together at very short notice, with government specialists and industry experts, in an effort to understand the dimensions of the problem and come up with concrete proposals on how to ease the crisis situation.

The ILO held a similar meeting two days later on the civil aviation industry, which had equally suffered from the events of 11 September. Both these sectors are facing a real crisis, with serious consequences for many employers and workers, a situation none of us wants. However, the silver lining in all this is the collective effort and commitment that has resulted, in which everyone has worked together to come up with creative and practical solutions to stave off mass lay offs and bankruptcies.

Although this is a recent example of social dialogue at the international level, social dialogue at all levels has been one of the basic goals – and an important instrument at the same time – of the ILO throughout its long existence. The pillar institutions of social dialogue are Freedom of Association and Collective Bargaining. It can hardly be doubted that these are associated with prosperous economic development everywhere in the world.

Freedom of Association and Collective Bargaining have therefore been declared by the ILO constituents as basic principles of the world of work. As such they were included in the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights of Work, adopted in 1998.

The tourism industry relies on its labour force more than most other industries. Many of its development challenges would therefore benefit if social dialogue was better developed.in this industry. Some of the conditions of the industry require particular attention in this context.

One is the preponderance of small and medium-sized enterprises which employ, in the industrialized countries, about half of the whole labour force of the sector. A large majority of entrepreneurs and workers of this segment are not affiliated to any organisation to represent them in social dialogue. In many small enterprises, labour relations have not grown out of the family framework. Likewise, small enterprises rarely have the strength to undertake innovation in human resources development.

Large parts of the tourism labour force is little committed to the industry, as they intend to work in it for a short time. A large portion of the labour force in the hospitality industry are very young and want to move on to other activities soon. A majority of those remaining on the job are women who have to combine their employment with family obligations. Many workers – men and women – accept part time employment, often to the extreme of on-call arrangements.

Migrants are another group of workers accepting unstable employment. This includes not only seasonal migrant workers coming from other parts of the country or even moving from one seasonal employment to the other, but also international migrants who often are also socially uprooted and lack knowledge of local institutions and culture.

One of the recognized challenges of the industry is how to retain workers in the sector in order to make investments in human resources development bear fruit. Under present conditions of globalized competition, it is considered essential to improve the quality of services without being more expensive. It is recognized that one of the ways out would be to improve skills and working conditions to get more workers committed to this industry.

Vocational training, therefore, has been in the focus of a tripartite meeting of almost 100 representatives from governments as well as employers’ and workers’ organizations in the hospitality and tourism sector which took place in Geneva this April. Its theme was human resources development in the context of the globalization of the industry. In its conclusions, the meeting called for partnerships between governments, employers’ and workers’ organizations, as well as other stakeholders, to develop training policies. The ILO was called upon to make experiences and best practices available between countries.

I want to congratulate the organizers of this Tourism Summit on their choice to deal with the socio-economic aspects of sustainable tourism development. When sustainable development came up as a world wide concern over ten years ago, astonishingly, tourism was not a focus of discussion. However, the importance of tourism for sustainable development, as well as the need for sustainable development of tourism became increasingly known during the last decade. For the most part, though, sustainability concerns have so far largely been limited to environmental questions. As far as social dimensions of tourism were highlighted, they were normally limited to the cultural stability and well-being of host communities or to preserving consumption patterns of the tourist population..At several meetings where the social partners of the hotel, catering and tourism sector came together in the ILO, they have called for a world-wide promotion of sustainable tourism development and mandated the ILO to play a role, with a focus on the labour dimensions of this industry. This means not only focussing on the number of jobs but also on their quality.

Two years ago, the International Labour Organization adopted an agenda for Decent

Work. It has four main objectives : Human rights at work ; employment and incomes ; safe work and social protection; and social dialogue. Social dialogue is not only a goal in itself, but is also a means to reach the other three objectives in a concerted manner.

If we look at the hospitality and tourism industry in the light of the ILO’s Decent Work Agenda, there remains a lot to do. But there are also ILO standards which aid in the solutions.

Three types of social deficits found in the tourism industry are amongst those addressed by the core labour standards found in Declaration on Fundamental principles and Rights at Work which I mentioned before. They concern the right to bargain collectively ; the combatting of discrimination in employment, including gender promotion and the protection of ethnic and other minorities; and the elimination of child labour.

I also want to draw your attention to the ILO Convention on Working Conditions in Hotels and Restaurants (1991). This Convention calls for equal standards to be applied to workers in the hospitality sector as compared to a country’s workers in general. In particular, the Convention provides for reasonable normal hours of work and appropriate overtime arrangements ; minimum daily and weekly rest periods; annual leave with pay ; and a regular minimum remuneration to be paid regardless of tips. The Convention also privileges collective agreements between representative employers’ and workers’ organizations as a means to apply its provisions, instead of making legal arrangements a condition.

The international labour standards I just mentioned provide for decisive participation of the social partners in the process of their application and implementation. Thus to obtain sustainable tourism development, it is critical, from the ILO’s perspective, to have effective and dynamic social dialogue.

Thank you for listening and I wish you a very successful conference.