Report in pdf format

Human resources development, employment and globalization
in the hotel, catering and tourism sector

Report for discussion at the Tripartite Meeting on Human Resources Development, Employment
and Globalization in the Hotel, Catering and Tourism Sector

Geneva, 2-6 April 2001

International Labour Office   Geneva

Copyright ©2001 International Labour Organization (ILO)

Part 3

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4. Human resource development

4.1. Introduction

The traditional constraints of the hotel, catering and tourism industry – long, antisocial working hours, low pay, unstable, seasonal employment, low job status, etc. – make employment within the industry appear unattractive to many. A study carried out in 1996 in Germany found that employment in the hotel and catering trade was not the first choice for nine out of ten employees, while only one employee in seven was satisfied with the trade as a choice of career. Nevertheless, the industry does attract some people either on a short-term basis or for a long-term career.

The immediate and most obvious consequences of such a situation are the difficulty of recruiting suitable staff and high staff turnover; both these effects are costly to the industry. There is therefore a perceived need for human resource development, to raise the profile of the industry, increase productivity and provide decent, sustainable employment within the sector.

4.2. Estimating labour productivity

A wide range of technological developments in service in hotels may be affecting productivity. Integrated management systems are enabling hotel companies to computerize day-to-day reception operations. Clients are thus able to make their own reservations via the Internet, while electronic in-room installations make it possible to settle accounts from the hotel room. This technology will also make it possible to monitor the productivity of personnel, while new techniques in food preparation and storage are reducing the skills needed in the kitchen and the time required for food preparation.^[163] Hotels are therefore seeking new ways to measure service delivery that take into account customer satisfaction and return visits, rather than sticking to a narrow “input/output” system.

In Europe, tourist-related activities account on average for 5.5 per cent of GDP in all European Union Member States and for a total of 9 million employees, representing 6 per cent of the total workforce. The precise percentages vary from country to country. According to WTTC simulated figures, the tourism industry’s labour force represents about 3 per cent of the world’s total labour force and produces about 4 per cent of total world GDP. The industry can therefore not be regarded as labour intensive throughout. Table 4.1 shows the figures for four countries where tourism is a labour-intensive industry.

Table 4.1.Tourism characteristic industries: Share of gross value added and employment

Country	Gross value added (%)	Australia (1997-98) compared*	Employment (%)	Australia (1997-98)* compared
New Zealand (1995)	3.7	3.2	4.1	4.9
Canada (1997)	2.5	3.9	3.7	5.7
United States (1997)	2.3-2.8	3.3	3.3-4.0	5.1
* Adjusted to the conceptual basis used by the comparator country. Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics: Australian National Accounts: Tourism Satellite Account 1997-98, Canberra, 2000, p. 9.

In order to estimate its labour productivity, the industry habitually uses – in addition to revenue per employee – the number of hotel rooms or beds per employee (see table 4.2).

Table 4.2.The hotel industry by global regions, 1995

The most striking thing to note regarding labour productivity in the different regions is the gap between Europe’s average of about US$47,000 per employee and the overall average of US$22,000. The performance of the Caribbean (around US$28,000) is also impressively higher than average.

In the hotel industry in developing countries there may be on average up to three people employed for each hotel bed, while in developed countries the inverse is true, with one person employed for up to three or even four hotel beds. However, figures of this sort can be affected by the range of services provided by a hotel: an establishment surrounded by a leisure complex, health resort or spa will naturally employ more ancillary workers. Labour productivity in hotels has increased over the last ten years by about 1 per cent per year. In the United States, the number of employees per 100 hotel rooms sold has declined from 81 in 1986 to 75 in 1997.^[164] The same productivity growth applies to the entire HCT sector whose GDP, according to WTTC simulated figures, has been growing by about 3 per cent per year, whilst employment in the industry has grown by only about 2 per cent per year.

Labour productivity in restaurants is hard to measure. Since only 50-60 per cent of all restaurant employees worldwide are full-time workers, the information available hardly allows us to establish absolute productivity ratios. For a comparison between regions, however, see table 4.3. Again, a striking differential of around six or more exists between industrialized and developing regions.

Table 4.3.The restaurant industry per region, 1997

4.3. New forms of work organization

(a) Flexible work

The First World Travel and Tourism Summit, held in 1977 in Vilamoura, Portugal, recognized that travel and tourism create an unparalleled number of entry-level jobs for young people and women and provides part-time or seasonal employment for people seeking flexible working arrangements. The Summit called for the reduction of rigid practices in labour markets to encourage greater staff mobility, productivity and innovation in a progressive employment environment, with emphasis on a flexible market economy, avoiding protectionist regulation.^[165] The Conclusions and Recommendations of the European Union’s High Level Group on Tourism and Employment^[166] drew attention to the fact that notable adjustments were taking place in European tourism, that these were critical to its competitiveness, and that they would lead to important changes in the tourism labour market. Those are: a refocusingof core competencies; a deskilling of operational tasks in some sub-branches; upgrading of skills and specializations, in particular in large enterprises and tourist organizations and in complementary services; and the creation of new professional profiles to meet tourists’ needs and preferences. The document draws attention to a tendency within the industry to transfer work operations from traditional core sectors to ancillary service suppliers.

A positive example of flexibility is provided by the Sheraton-Denver West Hotel in the United States, where two experienced sales managers share one full-time job, thus enabling the company to benefit from the energy and experience of two persons for the price of one. In this instance, both managers wanted to work part time to accommodate their personal and family needs. The arrangement was particularly effective, since both managers were in continual contact. Job-sharing opportunities of this kind will be even more viable in the future, as information becomes more comprehensively shared and more easily transmitted.^[167]

(b) Seasonal employment

One opportunity which has been insufficiently investigated is the possibility of using the inter-season period as a time for training to impart new skills, guaranteeing re-employment of qualified staff in successive seasons so as to retain their services. A hotel located in Savonlinna (South-Savo, Finland), a city famous for its summer opera festivals, has adopted this approach. To deal with the multicultural and demanding clientele drawn by the summer festival, the hotel pays its core staff to attend off-season training courses in language skills, knowledge of food and wine and leadership skills. Employee development is seen not as a cost but as an investment which pays good returns during the summer season.

(c) Multiskilling

The employers argue that one way to create sustainable, realistic employment in the industry is to implement a policy of “multiskilling”. This is also viewed as a means of reducing the problems of recruitment. Multiskilling has always been practised in small enterprises, but it is only recently that particular attention has been paid to it. As demand for general competencies in small enterprises as well as in major hotel and restaurant chains has grown, and as appropriate means of training for these competencies have been developed, awareness has grown of the importance of multiskilling in that segment. One person fulfilling several roles at different times of the day combines the tasks of several (part-time) jobs into one job. Multiskilling is also seen as a way to create or preserve a number of full-time jobs, as opposed to part-time jobs, since the tasks may be performed at any time of the day. Instead of employing specialists on a less than full-time basis, employees are trained to perform the tasks of several specialists, often supported by facilitating technology. In Finland, a relatively small hotel has adopted a “multitask” policy. All its employees must be willing to perform any of the tasks that are necessary to operate the hotel. When hiring staff, the hotel manager gives precedence to “right personality” over all other criteria. Some workers left when this decision was taken which suggests that the approach is not universally appealing to employees. According to the CBI, “… skills flexibility is indispensable for functional flexibility. It requires a strong basic education system and a commitment on the part of employers and employees to the acquisition of new and transferable skills. It helps maintain high employability and reduces frictional unemployment associated with skills mismatch”.^[168] The IUF, on the other hand, considers that such multiskilling may have the effect of devaluing specific skills, since the flexible worker, as viewed by the employer, has no specialized skills or job qualifications, and performing a variety of tasks requires a lower level of knowledge for each of them. The highly skilled, and consequently better remunerated, specialist worker may become a thing of the past.^[169] However, the unions also concede that an employee able to perform a variety of tasks is more valuable to an employer and should be remunerated accordingly.

4.4. New management methods

Corporate organizations are downsizing and restructuring, which means that they are cutting back on layers of management. This means that less direction is being imparted to employees, who are more frequently required to accept a greater degree of responsibility and accountability. Increased use of technology in the workplace also means an added responsibility for individual workers. It is estimated that the “knowledge revolution”, by providing clear information via the Internet on all the industry’s tangible elements (illustrations of accommodation and hotel facilities) will make the intangible elements (those imparted by personal contact and service) all the more important. Lower levels of staff will be empowered to act autonomously. Command and control structures are thus largely giving way to a participatory teamwork approach. Human resources trained to fit in with new working methods will have to be regarded as an asset in which investment must be made, rather than merely as a cost, or employees will seek employment elsewhere. Management is developing ways in which to attract and retain employees.

The advent of new technology will not stop the industry from being a supplier of entry-level jobs; clearly, a large number of routine jobs will continue to exist. However, the question of staff retention will remain a management problem. Information technology will make potential entrants to the industry more aware of the possibilities available, compounding the problem for the industry. In order to retain staff, certain companies have already set up an incentive system. McDonalds introduced a broad-based stock ownership programme in 1995 to improve staff morale and productivity, while in Europe, one major hotel chain has established the CHAMPS reward programme, in which employees earn points for cleanliness, hospitality, accuracy, product quality and speed. These points can be used to buy catalogue merchandise.

4.5. Career development

Truly structured careers, in which workers have genuine prospects of career development, are not numerous in the hotel, tourism and catering sector, and efforts to retain employees through incentives or promotion are the exception rather than the rule. Not only do people tend to “pass through” the sector, but research has shown that it is often the most talented who leave, since they are the most confident of finding other employment, while the less confident stay for fear of becoming unemployed. However, for many young people the industry is an entry point to the world of work. It brings workers into direct contact with the public and can provide opportunities for travel. Moreover, for young people, the provision of food and lodging – a common practice in the industry – facilitates entry into active adult life. These factors combine to make tourism a major motor for the social and professional integration of the young.

(a) New and changing occupational profiles

With the advent of new technologies and an increasingly discerning public able to keep informed through the Internet, the hotel sector is being forced to widen its sphere of action beyond the traditional provision of food and accommodation. In the pursuit of improving the intangibles, major hotel chains are seeking to provide more services, both in response to customers’ needs and in an effort to provide an “experience” rather than simple lodging. For example, the French Accor Group has expanded into travel agency services, car hire, casinos and on-board train services, while other groups have established connections with sectors that are indirectly linked to tourism, such as insurance, travel articles and health and beauty services. The range of services now expected by customers naturally requires an upgrading of skills among front-desk staff, who will for the most part be required to administer these services. This will call for motivated personnel with excellent social skills and an understanding of what people want.

Advances in computer technology allow far more rapid and detailed generation of information on quality and economic performance. Hotel managers will thus be called on to react more quickly, to analyse situations and take appropriate decisions. The wider range of services on offer will also call for greater marketing skills than were previously necessary. In large hotels and hotel chains this is resulting in the creation of posts which are new to the industry, but which already exist in other fields, such as budget analysis and management accounting expert, quality manager, yield manager, technical and computer services manager. With greater emphasis being placed on environmental protection, there is also an increasing need for experts on the environmental impact and planning of tourism development. Similarly, greater concern over food safety is creating a growing need for food safety and health experts. As the hotel sphere increasingly includes services catering for customers’ entertainment needs, sports and games specialists as well as specialized tour guides are opening up as careers in the tourism sector.

(b) Women’s careers

Women traditionally play an important role in the hotel, restaurant and tourism sector. However, their access to the higher levels of the corporate structure remains problematic. In the United States, a recent study found that less than half (43.8 per cent) of all managerial posts in hotels were held by women,^[170] while further figures show that although between 1985 and 1995 the number of women in restaurant supervisory positions rose by 34 per cent to 260,000, or 68.9 per cent of all food-preparation and service-providing jobs, they held only 8 per cent of seats on the boards of directors of 100 of the largest restaurant chains. Moreover, they represented only 4 per cent of the industry’s highest ranking officers, and 4 per cent of its top earners.^[171] To an extent this is the result of friction between family and work responsibilities, especially given the prevailing long working hours in the food-service business. The lower wages paid to women make it more feasible for them to take time off from work to look after family needs than for their husbands to do so. To help resolve this problem, enterprises are starting to introduce family-friendly programmes involving flexi-time, tele-commuting and childcare schemes.

At the level of line employees, a United Kingdom hotel has found an innovative solution to problems it had been encountering in recruiting and retaining room service staff. The hotel decided to target its recruitment efforts on mothers of school-age children and agreed to provide a play leader to look after the children during school holidays. The cost of the play leaderwas made up by saved advertising and recruitment costs previously incurred as a result of high staff turnover.^[172] Nonetheless, it remains generally true that there is a gender-based income disparity across all segments of the hotel, catering and tourism industry.

(c) Measures to promote career building in the enterprise

New divisions of labour and changes in the nature of jobs within the tourism sector mean that the industry is employing an increasingly varied range of employees. However, although tourism is a diverse sector which can provide many working opportunities for a wide range of skills, there is a shift within Europe away from specific skills towards broader, more generic competencies. Good practice in training is largely limited to large hotel chains, and small, individual enterprises tend to rely on training given “on the job”. According to research in Spain, managers of three-star hotels recognized that older workers rarely had any of the formal training required to deal with a more sophisticated clientele, and younger workers lacked industry-specific practical skills. However, they were generally reluctant or unable to invest in training, on the grounds that the cost could not be sustained by their operations.^[173] The key training needs established by employers and trade unions are food safety, IT, environmental awareness and foreign language skills. The industry provides few post-experience training or retraining opportunities, and, indeed, commitment by the private sector to human resource development appears slight, especially where such development lies beyond their immediate operational needs: “European companies, especially smaller businesses, provide little by way of financial and practical support for human resource development within the wider educational and training framework.”^[174]

Within the multinational hotel industry, however, there is a trend towards investment in education, training and development, to meet the need for a higher level of customer-oriented service. The Radisson Hotel Group acknowledges that the success of the company depends on the knowledge, skills, abilities, motivation and dedication of its employees, and consequently has a well-developed internal training system, with links to outside training establishments as well, to which 0.4per cent of each hotel’s total revenue is dedicated. Through the Radisson SAS climate analysis system, outstanding efforts and exceptional results, both individual and on a team basis, are rewarded through local incentive schemes. The training emphasis is shifting towards continuous learning and increasing the potential of individual employees. A total of 515 employees were trained in 11different areas in the Radisson SAS Management School in 1999, with specific training in business finance, revenue management, euro handling and business planning. Efforts have been made by the enterprise to establish relations with European and American hotel schools, so that a steady flow of students takes up internships at a Radisson hotel. The Per-Axel Brommesson Scholarship enables four talented employees a year to develop management skills through professional development programmes at institutions such as Cornell University, and other business schools.^[175]

In order to bring the training provided by formal education institutions into harmony with the requirements of the everyday operation of the trade, the industry has entered into partnership with teaching establishments, to ensure that the content of their courses is relevant to work in the sector, and to offer students, through that linkage, practical experience in all fields.In the United States in 1996, the Hospitality Business Alliance (HBA) was formed between the National Restaurant Association and the American Hotel and Motel Association to create a school-to-career programme. Worksite experience is an integral element of the training. During the school year, students work between 15 and 20 hours a week in the enterprise, gaining experience in front-desk operations, housekeeping, room service, safety and health, reservations, sales and marketing and convention services. The system has grown from involving three high schools in 1997 to 600 high schools in 1999, covering 25 States and 11,000 students.

One hotel group in the United Kingdom noted a training gap which was preventing the company’s (multi-)unit managers, whose role is a largely implementational one, from progressing to a more strategic role within the enterprise. The company’s human resource department has organized strategic management development schemes at a number of leading business schools in the United Kingdom and the United States. The courses are designed to expose area managers to the strategic concepts of operational management, including corporate governance, finance, marketing and human resource strategy.^[176] This move to supply appropriate training is appreciated by unit managers aspiring to strategic, policy-creative posts.

A number of hotel chains have introduced schemes to enhance careers within their structures, with a view to reducing staff turnover. Choice Hotels International in the United States analysed the requirements for its senior executives on the basis of suitable existing competency models, then assessed the competencies of current top executives and compared these with the competencies needed for the future. This enables the company to carry out annual readiness assessments and to establish a genuine career structure within the group, thus avoiding the disruption and expense of replacing executive staff. A further example is provided by Motel 6, which has established an HRD approach whereby every employee is eligible to become a manager, via a three-tier training scheme. By early 1998 this system had allowed around 300 Motel 6 employees to reach the grade of general managers, thereby helping to fill a need for qualified managers by providing employee training and the basis of a career structure.

(d) Developing language skills

An increasingly culturally diverse clientele has necessitated specialist training in the field of knowledge building for staff. ITT Sheraton operates a number of resort hotels in the Hawaiian islands, where the presence of Japanese clients has encouraged the creation of Japanese language and culture courses. This initiative has resulted in a significant increase in the number of Japanese guests frequenting the hotels, while the courses themselves have become problem-solving sessions with staff. In 1992, the Four Seasons Hotel and Resort developed the Self-Access Learning Centre in Indonesia, where the company was opening a new resort, to teach English to locally recruited staff. The courses were designed to take account of the fact that around 80 per cent of the staff had no more than primary-school education. The centre now teaches French and Japanese as well as Bahasa Indonesia. Employees are rewarded as they complete each of the five levels of the course with bonuses ranging from Rps.100,000 to Rps.250,000 (about $8-20), and a certificate of achievement. Turnover at the resort is low, at 4-6 per cent.^[177]

(e) Career enhancement through increased employee responsibility

The Ritz-Carlton Company has identified the empowerment of individual staff members as a way to retain staff through increased job satisfaction. Employees were invited to take on certain management duties: the front-office employees, for example, were invited to take over the role of the front-office manager. As an incentive, the hotel proposed dividing half of the savings obtained through the elimination of the post among the employees who had taken on the duties (about $1.00 each an hour). The replaced staff members were not sacked, but redistributed elsewhere in the company. At another hotel, a system of self-directed housekeeping teams was established and responsibility given to the teams for choosing their own work areas, evaluating room quality and conducting room inspections; this has increased the staff retention rate and morale among room attendants.^[178] In 1993, Accor launched a three-year programme to “re-engineer” the structure of Sofitel North America. The programme was designed to empower employees to make decisions to benefit guests, and called for volunteers eager to make improvements in services provided by the hotels. Since suggestions for improvements and alterations were now originating from the employees, peer resistance within each department was minimal: a culture of trust and communication was established. The result has been an increase not only in customer satisfaction, but in employee satisfaction as well. Staff turnover fell from 58 per cent in 1993 to 39 per cent in 1998, below the industry average.^[179]

Among the reasons frequently cited for reluctance to taking up employment in the hotel, tourism and catering trade, lack of promotion possibilities features prominently. The broad pyramid of the hierarchy within the industry renders interpretation of the word “career” difficult. While careers are possible in the sector, and it is theoretically possible to progress from waiter to managing director of a major hotel chain, the increasingly flat management structures can only make this increasingly difficult. On the other hand, systems designed to reward staff financially for their performance, with the aim of reducing staff turnover and encouraging a feeling of “belonging” to the enterprise, are not yet accepted by all staff, and vertical career aspirations are still widespread. Modern-minded employers trust that job satisfaction is tending to shift away from hierarchical feelings. Bonuses to enhance job satisfaction can be awarded (and sometimes withdrawn) at any time, according to individual or collective performance.

4.6. Tourism education and training

(a) Recognizing the need for tourism education and training

Employers maintain that many enterprises, especially SMEs, cannot pay wages commensurate with formal training and recognized qualifications. Others argue that the greater productivity made possible by training will make higher wages possible. In general, many of the operational activities in the industry require learning on the job, rather than formal training, and managers frequently state their preference for recruitment on the basis of personality rather than formal qualifications. More than 60 per cent of operational staff in Germany^[180] and more than half the labour force in Austria^[181] have had no formal training.

The industry displays a reluctance to give formal recognition to acquired skills, and this may reflect a wish to avoid claims for higher wages and prevent undesired mobility. On the other hand, a recent study also suggests that practical training and experience is more highly valued in the countries covered than formal, accredited training qualifications.^[182] Moreover, high staff turnover in the industry makes returns on training investment hard to evaluate. Employees, who may not wish to develop a career in the industry or may be discouraged by poor scholastic performance, also avoid measurement by public standards.^[183]

At middle management level and higher, however, tourism education is a formal requirement. In Canada, it is estimated that more than one-third of jobs in hotels require post-secondary education, including language proficiency,^[184] but a Brazilian study shows that only 12 per cent of hotel and restaurant staff have completed secondary school.^[185]

Tourism-related degree programmes have been slow to acquire recognition as a truly academic discipline although, given the increasing social and economic importance of tourism, a sound knowledge of its economic, social, cultural, environmental and political dimensions is essential.This is particularly the case in countries, including developing countries, where tourism is growing rapidly. In Europe, tourism training is seen as a means of boosting employment and recouping Europe’s dwindling market share in the industry.

(b) New skill requirements

In the Rhône-Alpes region of France, 7,000 new hotel and restaurant workers are required. Half the posts do not match formal training schemes. The bipartite committee on vocational training is therefore proposing that graduates acquire additional certificates to become waiters or wine-cellar specialists, as well as cooks, and is considering replacing the certification system with a system listing a variety of competencies. Given the higher customer expectations of quality in a one-to-one relationship with the service personnel, an important part of the required skills concerns personal behaviour and communication, as opposed to specialized operational skills. The new skill requirements have an undeniable vertical element. The joint vocational training committee in Rhône-Alpes therefore recommends recruiting waiters with higher school qualifications (baccalauréat).^[186] However, workers with that level of education rarely seek employment as waiters.

More complex workplaces have brought about a shift in training concerns from operational or vocational skills to personal and social skills. Operational skills are still required, but are increasingly focused on technological innovation. A capacity to learn and develop activities, and to assimilate all elements of a complex process, and effective communication skills, including negotiation in cases of conflict, are among the skills needed to enable today’s worker to attain the necessary autonomy at work.^[187] This presents a challenge for training institutions geared towards operational skills, rather than “soft” skills.

New technical skills which need to be acquired by line-level employees include: deeper and more up-to-date knowledge of materials and production processes; knowledge of computer programs and other new technologies employed in kitchens and the concomitant new working methods; awareness of safety and health issues, an understanding of the house “business culture”; and an ability to impart an increasingly broad range of information to customers. Language knowledge and a developed inter-cultural sensitivity are key skills for tourism personnel who have direct contact with customers.

Management-level requirements mirror the qualities listed above, but also embrace a new approach to human resource management and development. Enterprises are espousing a philosophy by which workers receiving “good service” from their superiors are more likely to provide “good service” to customers. Another important area of innovation and emphasis for management training is quicker response to – or anticipation of – market developments. This requirement is nothing new for top chain hotel managers, but it is new for many managers of smaller units and for department chiefs or supervisory-level managers. Adjusting in an autonomous way and developing innovative strategies require a capacity to generate the necessary flux of market information, and consequently also the ability to manipulate computer programmes. This marks a significant departure from the traditional picture of the independent hotel manager as “a jack of all trades” who does not work within budgets or performance targets.^[188]

(c) The importance of continuous training

Formally structured initial or primary training, including apprenticeships with practical and technical schooling, seems less adapted to the new “soft” skill requirements of today’s industry than continuous training, and current thinking holds that it might be restricted to a minimal, multisector learning platform to raise the employability of young people and their mobility between different sectors.^[189] Continuous training, which has the advantage that it may be used to react quickly to changing circumstances, is being directed towards imparting the new skills.

Traditional initial training systems prepare students for a limited number of occupations, more or less as listed in table 4.4 below.^[190] Their exact designation can vary from one system to the other, and in some systems there is an additional occupation of fast-food specialist. However, occupations in “real life,” subdivided in a hierarchical order, can make up a matrix of up to 100 different positions.

Table 4.4.Core occupations in hotels and restaurants

Continuous training in the industry is rare, and courses are insufficient in number and in quality. Spain has one of the most generous publicly financed continuous training schemes, under which in 1997 about 17 per cent of the 800,000 workers in the sector participated on average in one week’s training. Elsewhere, this figure hardly exceeds a few per cent. A survey carried out in all 15 member countries of the European Union in 1996 showed that 86 per cent of all employees in the hotel and restaurant trade had never received any further training.^[191]

(d) Learning for competencies

Exchanging the concepts of skills, capacities and qualification for that of competencies is consonant with the idea of the enterprise as a learning organization in which personnel have enhanced strategic and problem-solving capacities at all levels. Competencies are described in terms of the results to be achieved, whereas earlier methodologies prescribed tasks, abilities and desired attitudes, leaving the responsibility for the result to the hierarchy.^[192] To promote the new concept, the European Working Group on improving training in the tourism industry” convened by the European Commission recommends that research should be undertaken into ways to develop individuals’ capacity to make full use of general, technical and personal skills as well as the “soft skills” needed to make use of the other skills, and into how the enterprise can engage and combine the competencies of individuals in an organic manner.^[193] The concept of competencies and their standardization and certification can more easily be introduced where training schemes are flexible. Modular training has always been the basis of training systems in countries where no neat distinction was made between initial training and continuous training. Courses of varying duration, institutional backing, and funding modalities were extended to students of all ages. The new concept of competencies can therefore be introduced speedily to satisfy an increasing need for certification arising from more flexible employment relationships. Training systems in Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and Mexico now provide standards for competencies in the hotel, restaurant and tourism sector. Whilst employers offer “earning with learning” to encourage multiskilling, i.e. each acquired competency leads to an increment in salary,trade unions observe that the acquisition of various competencies by workers who occupy jobs outside conventional job classifications tends not to be remunerated appropriately.^[194] Bargaining for appropriate remuneration is more difficult where qualifications are diffuse and do not fit into any pre-established scheme. Moreover, bargaining collectively can hardly take account of all possible individual skill combinations. Indeed continuous training has been far less subject to social dialogue than has initial training. Where training for competencies has been introduced, standardization and certification of acquired skills are therefore essential.

(e) Certification

Globalization of the travel and tourism industry and the increased use of e-commerce require a common international understanding and certification of core skills in order to facilitate distance business transactions and assure buyers and sellers that the services they deal with meet certain standards anchored in the qualifications of the labour force. The competitiveness of small tourism enterprises will increasingly depend on the credibility and reliability of the services they can offer. Hotel and restaurant management training provided by colleges and universities is quite transparent even across national borders, but for operational level workers it is often developed by industry associations of the different sectors involved, and it is difficult to avoid overlapping even at the national level.

In recent years, the certification of skills has also been debated as a means of improving the functioning, transparency and permeability of local and national labour markets. Greater workers’ mobility between different employers, seasonal locations and ultimately across borders would enhance human resources allocation and create benefits for all players in the sector. On the other hand, there could be immediate disadvantages for some. Increased mobility of workers would counteract efforts made by employers to promote in-house human resources development, as the training and incentives provided would not necessarily pay off within the enterprise. Where elaborate initial training systems exist, they are regarded by trade unions as an acquired right. Certification of skills is therefore not endorsed as a substitute for formal initial training (where it exists), but only as a new way of presenting its results.

Greater international recognition of certification is needed where economic integration creates greater mobility within the labour market. In Latin America, an ILO project in the 1990s assisted nine countries on an inventory of qualifications with a view to agreeing on a common classification at a later stage.^[195] The European sectoral social partners are considering a proposal to make the description of acquired skills compatible between the European Union countries. The ECF-IUF and HOTREC are examining the possibility of implementing a “European qualifications passport” for the hotel and restaurant sector. Objections have been voiced on the grounds that certified skills for migrant workers might lead to higher wage claims; however, a qualifications passport could also help employers to find and recruit the right personnel much more easily.^[196]

(f) Providers of continuous education and training

There is a very wide range of private, public and semi-public institutions offering continuous education and training in the HCT sector. In some countries, such as Austria, entrepreneurs are required to obtain an entry certificate to the industry from the public authorities. In Switzerland, this practice has been abolished by most local governments. In these countries, and in others with a strong tradition of public training, the social partners run institutions to deliver continuous training, especially at a higher or middle level.^[197] Although continuous training features frequently in public debate in Austria, only 5 per cent of the workforce had recourse to it in 1996. This may be explained by the reluctance of employers to give workers time for training or to pay for the courses, or it may be caused by the workers’ own disinclination to undergo training.

(g) Private and semi-private institutions

Private hotel and restaurant training facilities are many and varied and employers as well as students tend to criticize the weakness or absence of public or joint (employer/government) control of private training establishments unless they have the authority to issue government-guaranteed certificates. In Switzerland, tight public control is exercised over the six establishments that issue government certificates. Their owners include government, employers’ organizations, a workers’ organization, a mixed foundation, and a fully private institution.^[198] The remaining 31 private hotel and restaurant schools in Switzerland are not publicly monitored: the Swiss Association of Hotel and Restaurant Schools performs this function. These establishments tend to recruit students from abroad and charge annual fees of up to Sw.frs.20,000.^[199] The training provided by the Swiss schools has already assimilated the requirements of the new skills and concentrates on continued general education, languages, and personality skills for managers. On the technical side, the emphasis is on marketing and product development, while more basic skills are dealt with in training blocks.^[200]

In the 1960s and 1970s, universities and colleges in the United States were the first to offer hotel and tourism degrees at the tertiary level. Since then, hotel and tourism curricula have been established at college and university level in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. In Spain, tourism schools used to have agreements with British universities to issue college certificates, but they have now linked up with local universities and their work has been integrated into the official Spanish education system.^[201] The training at universities, colleges and generally private specialized schools focuses on management of tourism enterprises or developing tourism destinations and also provides a grounding in both conceptual and practical skills geared to a sector dominated by small and medium-sized enterprises. The schools are responding to criticism, heard mainly in developing countries, regarding a lack of practical skills in their graduates. In recently industrialized countries, such as Brazil and China, local centres are upgrading their curricula through cooperation with renowned American and European hotel and restaurant schools.

Tourism education and training provided by trade associations is widely available in many industrialized countries. This in general consists of non-degree programmes of a more practical nature. In the United States, as an outstanding example, the Educational Institute of the American Hotel and Motel Association has provided educational services to almost 300,000 persons within the country and elsewhere. The institute offers its own diplomas and certificates in six areas of specialization using textbooks and distance learning materials produced by leading educators from various universities.^[202] Distance training systems with interactive Internet technology and worldwide outreach are starting to operate in all sectors, to the benefit of employees unable to leave work.

New work structures require more direct customer contact. Training institutions will accord greater attention to this area which is critical to improvement in productivity. However, there is little information available about changes in the area of traditional apprenticeships, through which (in Austria, for example) apprentices continue to be trained for the classical occupations of cook or waiter. It is probable, in view of the emphasis on personality and social skills, that training will become less formalized. These changes pose a considerable challenge as regards certification of skills for career purposes.

(h) Training provided by the employer

Elaborate human resource development strategies are usually linked to long-term business development plans, and these are more frequently associated with large enterprises. They are based on a budget set aside for training and providing for trainers to be contracted from outside the hotel. Training budgets can account for up to 3 per cent of a hotel’s financial turnover although 1 per cent of payroll is considered substantial. A system of assessing training requirements through frequent staff appraisal is found at establishments where staff development is taken seriously. Where training is less formalized, on the other hand, it is done by managers or supervisors who are not training specialists; there may be no budget set aside for it in spite of a declared willingness to offer training to staff. In such cases, training is often reactive rather than proactive, i.e. restricted to induction training for newly recruited staff and statutory (compulsory) safety and health training. It is also common for scheduled training sessions to be cancelled when employees are not replaced at their workplaces and therefore fail to turn up.

Major hotel chains rely largely on their own internal training systems. The Accor Group employs about 140,000 people in 132 countries. Five per cent of staff-related expenditure goes on training in three main areas: initial training for basic qualifications or as an introduction for new employees (delivered in-house); continuous training for director-level employees (department chiefs and others), covering areas such as sales, leadership, customer contacts and so on; and inter-cultural education. Accor’s training is delivered by the group’s own Paris-based academy which has training centres in various locations and countries. The Accor academy receives 14,000 trainees each year. In addition, the group has concluded agreements with a number of schools to accept Accor personnel for certain courses and to run fellowship programmes for Accor.

In spite of notable efforts by employers, the HCT industry comes bottom of a table of 16 industries in Germany in terms of the percentage of its enterprises that provide training for their employees (24.4 per cent, the median being about 70 per cent). On the other hand, continuous training for employees of hotel chains is quite common at management level. The Hyatt Group, to give one example of many, runs a “corporate management training programme”.^[203] In-house training at management level generates a strong commitment to the company culture among beneficiaries and yields very high dividends in terms of competitive advantage. In the United Kingdom, a recent survey showed that 60 per cent of all hotels, 53 per cent of restaurants and 70 per cent of pubs and caterers arranged some form of continuous training.^[204] Enterprises employing 11 or more workers provided significantly more continuous training than smaller establishments, as did hotel chains, as opposed to individual, private hotels. This was also the case in Brazil, where research shows that it is generally large or medium-sized hotels that provide training, and that courses are short (21 hours on average).^[205] Since the larger hotels also tend to offer better employment conditions in other respects too, they can lure workers away from smaller hotels, to the detriment of any staff development policy in the independent hotels.

An example of the way in which some independent hotels address the problem of skills deficiencies is provided by one group of United Kingdom hotels. The group in question has formed a training consortium which works with a regional college to run an employee training and development programme, thus allowing economies of scale. All the hotels in the group can send one or two staff members to attend the courses as required.^[206]

Employers use training as a means of curbing staff turnover and of encouraging staff loyalty to the enterprise so as to maintain a core staff. In some cases, training is also given to casual but frequently employed staff who do not want a permanent contract. Training may also be used as a means to make up for difficult working conditions and low remuneration.However, it should be noted that although most workers have received induction training and safety and health training, specific career-building training was generally provided only for a minority of staff, such as those in the upper hierarchy.Table 4.5 shows the types of training received by staff.

Table 4.5.Types of training received

4.6. Defining the training gap

The hotel and restaurant industry suffers from a discrepancy between training supply and demand. The specialized training institutions tend to lag behind developments in the industry, and these developments are particularly radical at present. The current skills gap is felt to be at the operational level, whereas training institutions, especially private institutions, are largely geared towards management training. This situation is seen in Brazil, where a study shows that training institutions are relevant only for the higher qualification levels and the majority of staff recruited by enterprises have not undergone any formal training (see table4.6).^[207]

Table 4.6.Bahia (Brazil): Composition of the labour force and training offered, by occupational levels and minimum schooling

(a) New techniques of training delivery

Education and training are benefiting from developments in information and communication technologies and are increasingly being delivered through multimedia devices such as interactive on-line connections and CD-ROM. Investments in competitive training packages can be immense: the cost of a recent training CD-ROM for the hotel and restaurant sector was US$1 million. Large chains of hotels are also making use of this technology to fulfil their training needs: Holiday Inn spent US$2.5 million in 1995 to create online training multimedia for its employees. In 1998, Cendant’s Days Inn launched an interactive web-based training programme to maximize the efficiency of the training budget and employee time.

Traditional schools are finding themselves in competition with “cyberschools”, and where multimedia training devices are used within traditional schools, teachers are moving away from their traditional role as sources of knowledge towards a new role as “coaches” who help students to tap into much better (electronic) sources of knowledge. Hotel and restaurant firms are already developing and using multimedia components to guide employees through everything from making a pizza to providing a help desk for night auditors.^[208] Students will be able to chose when and where to undergo their training, and to adapt it to their individual learning speed.Education and training will shift from being teacher-centred to being learner-centred.

In the Netherlands, the Hotel School of The Hague has developed an innovative teaching method. There are no traditional classes. Students are set problems individually or in groups and then seek the information they need to solve them, coached by former teachers. In order to do this they have to develop technical and behavioural skills of various kinds and in different areas which hitherto were taught separately. Students are expected to return to the school throughout their professional life for recycling and “lifelong learning”, supported by more or less permanent on-line learning. Increased motivation has been noted both among staff and students. However, performance measurement was harder,^[209] and prospective employers will have to adjust their selection criteria in order to assess the new type of training.

Conditions for electronically supported learning are almost ripe for a further “quantum leap”. The interconnection of individuals and the formation of virtual learning groups, as well as the ability to call up from a local workstation all the knowledge accumulated by a company or made available through leasing contracts, will change lifelong learning into a continuous updating of personnel. Expert support will be made available on line and in real time, and there will be virtually no limits, other than those of cost, to the instant accessibility of the multimedia training material needed for individual learning plans.^[210]

(b) Social dialogue on training

Tripartite or bipartite cooperation on training policies is common in many countries, at central or local levels. In many countries, developed or developing, staff training is guided by tripartite bodies, some of them sectoral. In Canada, the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union (HERE), the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) and the United Food and Commercial Workers sit beside management on the board of the Canadian Tourism Human Resource Council (CTHRC) which provides labour-oriented input to new certification and training programmes.

The dual system of initial training common in a number of European countries has long been based on a firm consensus between employers’ and workers’ organizations and on detailed legislation. Proposals for changes in pertinent legislation go through solid consultation procedures before they can be adopted by the competent authorities. Quicker action and intensive consultation is required in the sphere of continuous training, particularly where the improvement of workers’ skills is part of a broader strategy for the development of the hotel, catering and tourism sector on a national or regional basis.

Spain provides an example of an effort to rapidly improve the quality of the tourism product in the face of increased international competition. Joint sectoral committees composed of delegates from representative workers’ and employers’ organizations, technically supported by the Foundation for Continuous Training (FORCEM), appraise training plans with a view to submitting recommendations for public funding to a central (inter-sectoral) joint committee. The sectoral committees propose certification criteria for continuous training courses in accordance with a national qualification system. Women’s training heads the list amongst the target group criteria of the Spanish joint committee on hotels and restaurants.^[211]

In a number of Latin American countries, tripartite committees on vocational training have been in existence for decades and have influenced some vocational training policies. However, as most efficient vocational training systems were run by sectoral employers’ organizations using payroll-based funding modalities (Brazil, Colombia), unions felt that their participation in steering committees did not always have the desired effect. Designing standards for competencies is a new area in which tripartite cooperation is developing at a rather technical level.

In the European Union, an important step was taken by the ECF-IUF and the European Federation of Contract Catering Organizations (FERCO). In 1999 they concluded an “Agreement on vocational training in the European contract catering sector,” which provides for joint initiatives in the area of continuous vocational training. In particular, it refers to non-discrimination between men and women, full-time and part-time employees and professional categories, in respect of access to continuous training measures. Before the agreement, the ECF-IUF prepared a survey on continuous training in the European contract catering industry based on a questionnaire.^[212] It produced a very heterogeneous picture across the countries in terms of regulations (none at all, legislation or collective agreements), volume (in terms of percentage of payroll spent on continuous training), distribution (between blue-collar and white-collar workers), participation of workers’ representatives in planning, certification, and other areas. The survey concluded that continuous training was provided by enterprises, and that the skills required were not recognized officially. It noted that such training still helped workers to advance in their careers or to find alternative employment. However, such training did not fully meet workers’ expectations, and there was inadequate trade union involvement.

5. Social dialogue

5.1. Introduction

The social dialogue relationship between the social partners in the hotel, catering and tourism sector in general seems to need more development. Both workers and employers agree that much remains to be done. There are differences, however. Trade unions’ concerns are centred on being recognized as partners for social dialogue everywhere, as pointed out below. Employers generally favour greater social responsibility of the enterprise, but not all employers actively promote partnership with trade unions as a means of achieving their social goals. Whatever the current and future shape of partnerships, the understanding of the International Hotel and Restaurant Association (IH&RA) is that the social role of enterprises will be determined by a general trend towards democratization.^[213]

Employers also see better partnership between management and labour arising from a common response to the challenges of global competition. They anticipate that workers’ organizations will adjust to the discipline that capital markets impose on business,^[214] while trade unions are worried by practices such as subcontracting and franchising which they feel create divisions among those working at the same location. They also favour the ratification by ILO member States of the Working Conditions (Hotels and Restaurants) Convention, 1991 (No. 172), and the promotion of equality between women and men at the workplace.^[215]

A trend towards improving social partnership can be observed in the Caribbean, where the tourism industry is by far the most important economic sector and where employers’ “increasing recognition of the need to engage the cooperation of labour is matched by an increasing recognition on the part of labour that the transformation of business into more productive and competitive operations could mean higher levels of employment and income security”.^[216]

5.2. Organizations

The coverage by workers’ and employers’ organizations of the hotel, catering and tourism sector can vary from country to country and from region to region. In general, workers’ organizations are more diverse than employers’ associations. For historical reasons, trade unions either: (a) cover a number of sectors, of which the hotel, catering and tourism sector is only one; such is the case of those trade unions that represent the entire food production chain from farms to restaurants or groceries; or (b) cover a proportion of workers in the hotel, catering and tourism sector as a result of overlapping with their main sectors, such as office workers (travel agencies), transport workers, workers in services in general (France) or in personal services in particular (Austria).

On the other hand, employers’ organizations in the HCT sector are more uniform, as hotels and restaurants form a clear majority amongst their membership. As far as the restaurant subsector is concerned, however, representation of employers in a number of countries is subdivided into three different types of specialized organizations covering conventional restaurants, collective or institutional catering, and, more recently, fast-food restaurants, as in Germany.

At the European level, there are two federations of employers’ organizations: the Confederation of National Associations of Hotels, Restaurants, Cafés and Similar Establishments in the European Union and European Economic Area (HOTREC), for conventional hotels and restaurants; and the European Federation of Contract Catering organizations (FERCO), for collective or institutional restaurants.

The International Hotel and Restaurant Association (IH&RA) is the largest organization of hotel and restaurant employers at the international level, representing over 750,000 establishments in more than 150 countries. Among its affiliates are some 50 national and international hotel and restaurant chains, many independent hotel operators and restaurateurs, over 110 national hotel and restaurant associations, a number of industry suppliers, and 130 educational institutions in the hotel and restaurant industry.^[217]

The largest workers’ organization at the international level, the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations (IUF), has 326 affiliated organizations representing 10million workers in 118 countries.^[218] Other international trade secretariats, the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), and Union Network International (UNI), which represents workers in travel agencies, coordinate their action with the IUF. At the European level, this coordination has resulted in a special European Trade Union Liaison Committee on Tourism (ETLC).

5.3. Obstacles to workers’ organizing

Workers in the hospitality sector are in general organized in trade unions to a lesser degree than workers in other sectors. This is due to a number of circumstances including the following:

• The small size of enterprises: Owing to the prevalence of small enterprises, trade union affiliation in the HCT sector may be as little as 10 per cent on average in industrialized countries. However, major hotels in large cities are often unionized, even in countries where smaller units or hotels located outside the centres of large cities are not. For example, in Canada (Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal), an estimated 80 per cent of large full-service down-town and airport hotels were unionized in the mid-1990s.^[219] In the United Kingdom, the role of trade unions is stronger in institutional catering, mainly in the public sector, and in a minority of large hotel groups.^[220]
• The mainly young workforce: Most workers in the HCT sector lack experience with labour issues as they are in their first formal employment, which in most cases is still of a transient nature.
• High staff turnover: Even those workers who stay in the sector will change employers frequently or leave work altogether during certain periods of their life; this is notably the case with women when their children are small.
• Prevalence of part-time and casual work, irregular hours: Part-time or on-call arrangements, as well as irregular working hours, keep communication between workers at a low level. In particular, the increasing number of students working in the sector are not necessarily inclined to join trade unions.
• Varying employment contracts: Subcontracting, fixed-term employment, and internships in many modern hotel and restaurant enterprises split workers up into several segments with different employment conditions, even when they perform the same tasks. This results in individualization of workers and competition between them.
• Gender: Weak affiliation to workers’ organizations is more common among women workers since they are disproportionately represented among part-time, casual and young workers and in small enterprises. As they form the less qualified and less well-remunerated segment of the labour force, they also tend to have less access to information and are less able to contribute to workers’ collective bargaining power.
• Attitude factors: Low self-esteem among the workforce as a collectivity is specific to the hotel and restaurant sector. This is due, firstly, to its generally poor image from which only modern enterprises are immune. The sector is still associated with service in the traditional sense, which involves a “submissive” relationship . Secondly, success in hotel and restaurant services is hard to measure objectively, as it depends on the subjective feelings of customers. The modern customer relationship is built on individual capacities, skills and style, and there is little collective kudos to be had from excellent service.

These factors are reflected in the attitudes of many employers who do not favour the organization of workers in independent bodies with roots outside the enterprise. This is particularly marked in small and medium-sized enterprises and in multinational enterprises whose central management is not used to a trade union culture. Some observers stress the paternalistic management style prevalent in small hotels and restaurants as a factor working against any collective workers’ representation.

5.4. Subcontracting and franchising

Trade unions in the hotel and restaurant sector take the view that subcontracting is a method increasingly used to divide workers and thereby weaken collective bargaining power. Moreover, subcontractor enterprises are normally less unionized or belong to a different sector from that of the contracting enterprise. As a result, they tend to pay lower wages and provide less stable employment conditions. Increasingly, subcontracted services relate to security and surveillance, maintenance, cleaning, catering for hotel personnel and restaurant services for guests. As profit margins are considerably lower for restaurants than for hotel operations, subcontracting of restaurants is being increasingly used in large and medium-sized hotels.

The Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union (HERE) in the United States and Canada acknowledges that leasing out a hotel restaurant is economically attractive where the hotel is unionized and the leasing enterprise is not. The phenomenon is “exacerbated [for the unions] because in most major North American cities the restaurant industry is largely non-union”.^[221] At the “New York-New York” Casino in Las Vegas, for example, where virtually all food and beverage services have been subcontracted, HERE represents 900 workers; it would represent 2,700 workers in the hotel if food and beverages were not leased out.

Safeguarding workers’ interests in the context of subcontracting has become one of the main objectives of collective bargaining in the hospitality sector. Trade unions are not opposed to subcontracting in principle but want to negotiate the modalities in order to protect workers against dismissal or deterioration of employment and working conditions. The IUF regards subcontracting as a priority area. An example of employment and subcontracting arrangements in a large hotel in France is described in box 5.1.

Some of HERE’s local affiliates bargain to establish joint liability of the employer and the subcontractor. Agreements include a commitment on the part of the (old) employer, e.g. “to require such contractor to offer employment to existing personnel, to recognize their length of service, and to recognize the union as the collective bargaining agent”.

The franchising system creates similar difficulties with regard to worker representation as subcontracting, especially where legislation provides for company-wide workers’ representative bodies based on minimum numbers of employees per unit. Franchised units have the legal status of independent employers, although in terms of their workplace activities they are an integrated part of a larger company. Trade unions therefore believe that there is an imbalance between the actual size of a company and the legal status of its smaller units. Franchised units benefit from the support of central management in areas such as labour relations, marketing, technological innovation and standardization of procedures. However, agreements concluded between trade unions and companies such as Accor or McDonald’s apply only to those units that are owned centrally, not to other franchised units which may well represent the majority of all units, as is the case with McDonald’s. The IUF therefore proposes to its affiliates a strategy aimed at creating the same social conditions for workers in franchised units as for the workers in units fully owned by the multinational company in question, in accordance with the principle “same brand-same rights”.

The example of McDonald’s is illustrative. By the end of 1999 the McDonald’s Corporation employed well over one and a half million workers in more than 25,000 units in over 110 countries (about half of all of the units were in the United States).^[222] Some 70-80 per cent of its outlets are franchised, and the company owns 60 per cent of the sites.^[223]At the same time, trade union membership at McDonald’s restaurants is extremely low, as can be seen from table 5.1.

Table 5.1.Trade union membership density in Europe’s hotel and restaurant sector compared to McDonald’s

5.5. Workers’ representation at the enterprise level

It has been pointed out in previous sections of this report that the hospitality sector, with its subdivision into relatively small units, its service industry character and its flexible orientation towards the customer, has been guided by teamwork for a long time. Bodies that organize workers within the enterprise on the basis of teamwork structures, such as quality circles, are therefore more common than formalized works councils.

Workers’ representation at the employer’s initiative rarely addresses fundamental interests such as pay or working time. It is intended more to improve communication between staff and management and among staff members, and to deal with questions concerning the improvement of day-to-day business operations and staff training. For example, the British Hospitality Association (representing 25,000 establishments in the United Kingdom) advises that the issues dealt with in consultation with the workers should be selected at the discretion of the employer and as required by legislation.^[224]

The actual presence and activity of employees in non-elected workers’ participation structures seems to vary considerably depending on the subject dealt with, whether the meeting takes place during working hours, at what time of day, and other factors. Participation is therefore largely on an ad hoc basis. An Accor hotel manager in Paris, referring to meetings with staff on hotel refurbishing options, stated that as a rule one-third of the staff had participated actively, another third remained rather passive but were present at the meetings, and the rest did not attend.

An example from the United Kingdom is shown in box 5.2.
 

Where staff representation in the enterprise is based on the election of representatives, whether required by law or not, trade unions are generally involved even where their candidates do not stand for election under the trade union label. The existence of works councils in turn greatly facilitates the activities of workers’ organizations, including trade unions, and is a precondition for a high affiliation rate. According to the Nahrung, Genuß, Gaststätten (NGG) trade union in Germany, referring to the setting up of a works council at McDonald’s, trade union membership becomes well established and increases rapidly after a works council is created, rising on average from almost zero to around 50 per cent or more.^[225]

However, legislation on works councils is applicable only to enterprises with a minimum number of employees. Given that the hotel, restaurant and tourism sector is dominated by rather small enterprises, most of its workers in reality are not yet participating in social dialogue.

5.6. Collective bargaining

Collective bargaining in the hotel, catering and tourism sector varies according to the social dialogue culture of a country or region. Collective agreements often differ from each other according to local conditions or enterprise cultures. Trade unionists say that the great variety of collective agreements in the sector may reflect a low level of coordination across geographic and enterprise borders and ultimately follows from low trade union density. Collective agreements are not yet fully applied to ensure decent working conditions for all and competitive human resource development, even where appropriate clauses are contained in the text. They normally cover mainly remuneration and working conditions, as well as non-discrimination and, more recently, the prohibition of child labour. Training provided by the employer is mentioned only in a minority of collective agreements. Among the working conditions reflected in most agreements, working time predominates owing to the prevailing irregular working hours and the difficulty of assessing overtime and guaranteeing rest periods. Works councils, where they exist, are often given ad hoc power to agree to changes at short notice. A brief description of the coverage of collective agreements in the HCT sector in Africa is given in box 5.3.