Hospitality workers in Tenerife have given hotel employers just 15 days to agree to a pay rise, or face strike action at the height of the summer holiday season.
The unions Sindicalistas de Base and UGT are demanding a 6.5% wage increase for staff across the Santa Cruz de Tenerife province. If their demands aren’t met by mid-June, they say industrial action could begin as early as July, affecting tourism during one of the busiest times of the year.
It comes after around 80,000 people took to the streets in Tenerife over Easter, calling for better working conditions in the hospitality sector, one of the island's biggest employers.
Negotiations between unions and the employers’ associations Ashotel and Aero were held on Thursday in a hotel in the island’s capital. According to minutes from the meeting, accessed by news agency EFE, another union involved in the talks, CCOO, is backing a smaller 5% wage rise.
Sindicalistas de Base, which holds the most seats on the negotiating committee, is urging the President of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, and regional tourism and employment minister, Jéssica de León, to step in and mediate, as they did during a previous dispute before Easter.
Unions say any agreement must include a full pay rise, without any loopholes or deductions, and must be backdated to January 2025. They’ve made it clear that no further negotiations on other workplace matters will happen until this condition is met.
If employers don’t meet the deadline, unions say strikes and further protests are inevitable.
The row threatens to disrupt Tenerife’s vital tourism industry during the peak summer period, when thousands of British holidaymakers are expected to flock to the island.
