AFTER THE latest confrontation between hotel employee unions and employers that nearly resulted in a 15,000-person national strike, hotel owners may be envying the path taken years ago by ex-hotelier Dinos Lordos.
Several years ago Lordos, who remains a major investor in the tourism industry, withdrew from the collective agreement, thereby freeing his hotel management from restrictions imposed by the national unions and enabling them instead to settle on employment conditions directly with their hotel workers.
Because Lordos maintained several hotels, the hotel employees were able to create a single union among all the hotels, thereby maintaining substantial bargaining power.
The collective agreement, which determines salaries, overtime pay, and work hours, among other matters, is drawn up every three to five years between employers and hotel branch employees in trade unions SEK and PEO.
While other hotel employers might like to withdraw from the collective agreement to be free of the influence of powerful trade unions, it is unlikely they would do so as few Cypriot employees would be willing to work for a hotel without union protection.
Although hotels would likely be able to staff their hotel with non-unionised foreign workers, the move could tarnish their image, especially in the case of luxury hotels, which promote themselves as bastions of ‘local Cypriot hospitality’.
Antonis Josephides, manager of Larnaca’s Flamingo Hotel, told the Sunday Mail that the “loyalty of the staff, goodwill, and legal implications” were also factors contributing to the hesitance of hotels to withdraw from the collective agreement.
Hoteliers claim that the trade unions make unreasonable demands upon them as salaries are higher in Cyprus compared to other countries in the Mediterranean basin and as terms of employment (i.e. hours of employment, number of breaks, etc.) are more restrictive, thereby raising the cost of labour to the employer.
Dinos Lordos told the Sunday Mail that it was an “intelligent decision” to withdraw from the collective agreements, claiming it also benefited the employees, who were able to create their own trade union separate from the national organisation, thereby enabling them to “pursue their own interests as an internal trade union”.
Lordos said that before he withdrew from the agreement seven years ago there were cleaning ladies at his hotels making between £800 and £1,200 per month.
“The trade unions wouldn’t budge when others were paying cleaning ladies £300 or £400 per month. We actually had one cleaning lady making £1,350 per month. As a result, we didn’t have the money properly to pay waiters and chefs, who could make much more in restaurants than in hotels. They [the low salaries of waiters and chefs] were subsidising the wages of the cleaning ladies.”
Lordos said that despite holding a number of discussions with the union heads to bring hotel wages in line with the market rates, “the trade unions wouldn’t budge on anything.”
“We didn’t want to reduce payrolls, but to rationalise them,” Lordos said. “The attempt [of the unions] was to make the hotel workers into civil servants and to some extent they succeeded.
“They broke the back of the hotel business.”
‘It’s awful here’
WHILE hotel owners maintain that trade unions make unreasonable and often impossible demands of them and claim that their staff are among the best paid in the region, hotel workers in turn complain that they can barely manage on their salaries.
A receptionist at a Limassol hotel, who asked to remain unnamed, told the Sunday Mail that conditions and salaries were “awful” at her hotel.
“If you are single and you live with your parents, then okay, you can get by, but if you are married and have a family then the salary is not enough.”
The receptionist said that though the hotel clients are “very demanding and the environment is high-pressure” she makes only around £410 after medical and social security are removed from her paycheck.
“There is no co-operation and everyone is for himself… it’s no good. Everyone I know who works here feels the same way.”
Even though many hotel employees, especially summer workers, put in 70- or 80-hour weeks, she only works 40 hours, 5 days per week. But despite the comparably reasonable working hours, she is not provided with room or board.
The receptionist is a member of the PEO hotel workers’ union, but her employer told her that she should not strike “for her own protection” and because she was on contract, so she decided against participating in the strike, which was averted in the end anyway.
But her employer has not followed his end of the contract. She said that her contract states that she should get overtime pay on Sundays as well as a 13th and 14th salary, but in the two years she has been there she has never received overtime pay for Sunday work nor a 14th salary – both issues of contention in the recent deadlock.
“I haven’t gone to complain yet,” she said. “You have to go two or three times to complain before they change anything.”
