When adopting measures such as reducing the maximum number of working hours, it is advisable to bear in mind the intricacies of each sector. In the case of the hospitality industry, other factors have an impact such as the difficulty in recruiting staff and the high level of absenteeism, which should be addressed as a whole.
In Spain, by law workers may not work more than an average of 40 hours a week calculated annually, unless a different number of hours has been agreed in the collective labor agreement or employment contract. This has been the case since 1983. Up until then the maximum number of working hours was 42 in the case of continuous working days and 43 hours for split shifts.
Following the last general elections, the parties that make up the Government reached a legislative agreement to reduce working hours without a reduction in salary. The aim in 2024 is to reduce the working week to 38.5 hours and in 2025, to 37.5. The agreement is clear. That is to say there is no question of how many hours the working week should be reduced by, it has already been decided; the intention is to let the labor unions and employer’s association agree on how to go about it.
The Government believes that since the effective average working week is already around 38.5 hours, (specifically, the average working week of the registered collective labor agreements is 38.2 hours), the intended change is not so big and would put Spain on a par with other countries. Indeed, apart from the countries that already work these hours (France, Belgium and Iceland), other countries have also chosen to reduce their working week: Denmark (37.2 hours a week), the Netherlands (37.3 hours a week) and Norway (38 hours a week).
However, it is also true that, at present, the Ministry of Labor has not managed to reach an agreement on how to implement this reduction: whether it should be done gradually or in one hit, whether a four-day workweek should be adopted or instead reduce the maximum number of hours worked annually (which we looked at in a different post) and whether the measure should be implemented according to the particular features of each sector.
In the hospitality industry, not only does the application of this measure entail considerable challenges, it would also involve a sizable wage increase.
According to a recent report by Exceltur taking into account data recorded by the EPA (the active population survey), in 2023, 45% of the total number of salaried employees in the tourism industry, that is one million workers, would not be able to offset a reduction in working hours to a maximum of 37.5 per week, with a “more efficient use of working time”.
According to said report, these one million employees in the tourism industry, represent 80.4% of the total 1.2 million of salaried employees that work more than 37.5 hours a week. With the Government’s proposal, the number of hours per week would be reduced by half an hour to 5.7 million hours, a total reduction per year of 294.6 million. In addition, the cost for companies of the million salaried workers that cannot offset the hours would amount to 2,348 million euros, which constitutes an average increase of 4.9 % in the labor costs of tourism companies and a drop in profits of 8.1%.
To calculate this total figure, the employers’ association has borne in mind that on average, 2.6 million workers a year work in the characteristic branches of the tourism industry, of which 400,000 are considered self-employed and whom the measure would be unlikely to affect.
However, this is not the only problem. It would also be very difficult to find workers, since a reduction in working hours would also make it more necessary to hire personnel in a context in which companies are finding it more and more difficult to recruit employees.
The situation is becoming desperate and in their quest to find candidates, many companies are getting creative: some hotels in the Canary Islands already pay their workers a bonus if they manage to bring in people who want to work in their hotels. This is a clear example of how companies are trying to adapt to the difficulties in finding candidates for jobs, especially now that the high season is right around the corner and the country will enjoy the best months of the year with the boom in tourism. The problems are particularly acute in coastal areas and the islands, which receive the highest number of visitors and where, at times, other circumstances arise that make recruitment difficult, such as a huge shortage in housing. The absence of available housing is undoubtedly making it difficult for the unemployed to move to the areas that are looking for workers which could partly be why there are nearly three million unemployed in Spain, yet many vacancies remain to be filled.
Therefore, a reduction in working hours is undoubtedly a measure that, depending on how it is implemented, could be harmful in the hospitality industry. Consequently, it should not be applied to all sectors as a whole, and should be debated sector by sector. Moreover, this problem should be addressed together with others that are causes for concern in the hospitality industry, such as the difficulty in hiring staff and absenteeism.
Labor and Employment Law Department
