British tourists could face “major disruption” in Tenerife with weekly strike action planned throughout July and August. Unions representing the hospitality industry have confirmed staff will walk out every Friday during summer in the major tourist province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
Tourists’ holidays could be hugely impacted as the unions reportedly intend to launch protests right outside the doors of hotels to create the maximum impact. The strikes are expected to start on July 4, although the unions, including the Base Trade Unionists and UGT, will confirm the dates on Monday, June 16.
The unions had threatened to strike over pay and conditions unless an agreement was reached within the last fortnight.
On May 29, they gave employers a fifteen-day deadline to respond to their demand for a 6.5% salary increase before negotiating a new agreement, according to the general secretary of the Grassroots Trade Unionists, Manuel Fitas, and José Tomás Ramos, head of the hospitality sector at UGT Tenerife.
A negotiating table meeting has been called for Wednesday, and the hotel and non-hotel employers’ association for Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Ashotel, is confident it will result in an agreement to avoid industrial action.
Its manager, Juan Pablo González, said they are “moderately optimistic” about making progress. He believed it was still possible to stop the strikes because if they were not, “we would withdraw from the table.”
He insisted: “When there is margin and interest to negotiate, the normal thing is to negotiate.”
Asked if they would be willing to make an exception to avoid a strike, he confirmed that “we limit everything to the table because that is how collective agreements are negotiated”.
“There is room for all kinds of initial approaches at the table, and from there we will see,” added the manager.
On the unions’ request that the president of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, mediate between the parties again, as he did before the Easter strike, González said: “We understand that we are all adults and we do not need mediators in this type of labour conflict. Those of us who are called to understand each other and to resolve it are those who are part of the table.”
He conceded that “if at any given time the president calls us to a meeting, we will obviously go out of institutional respect”.
However, Fitas and Tomás Ramos regretted that the employers “are stubborn” in talking about other aspects within the framework of the negotiation of the agreement, so they said the process “is going to take forever”.
