dossier sur le tourisme et le développement durable

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Employment and training
general: 380 managers were lacking, 1 150 higher level technicians and, more generally, 7 000
graduates from the professional hotel schools (only 15% of the employees had this type of
education). The emigration of diplomas strengthened this deficit, as did the change to diplomas
for other sectors of activity considered more profitable (banking, insurance). In 1997 very few
establishments had training programmes despite the existing possibilities such as a 40 to 70%
reimbursement of the training by the Office for Professional Training and Employment Training
in the framework of special contracts.
The positive influence of tourism on employment has to be restrained when considering status,
conditions of work and remuneration. The possibilities offered for training do not yet permit the
level of quality needed nor do they take into account the new social and environmental
preoccupations.
2.3. Difficult work conditions, poorly paid and precarious jobs
The answer to the need to improve the qualifications of tourism employees does not merely lie
in training but in the attractive nature or not of these jobs. The latter are often badly paid and
subject to constraints due to the work conditions. Skilled workers are discouraged by low
salaries.
The high seasonal nature of jobs in tourism causes instability and precariousness. Seasonal
contracts and constant change in staff hinder lasting relations between the employees and the
enterprises and thus compromise quality improvement. In Greece this seasonal aspect is very
much present but it is not always badly accepted: according to a survey carried out in Crete,
seasonal work was often better paid than non seasonal work (+6.4% of the hourly rate) and
more than a third of the employees did not want to find jobs outside the season.
In France, a survey carried out concerning the work conditions in tourism jobs showed that
salaries were generally lower than for other jobs, the rate of employment precarious (seasonal
contracts, part-time and limited contracts), and the work conditions involved difficult hours and
Sunday work. The hotel and catering sector had just negotiated an agreement for a 43-hour
week when the other sectors were negotiating for the change-over to the 35-hour week. This is
also an established fact in other countries of the Mediterranean and it makes jobs in tourism
unattractive, which is not a problem for the professionals in countries where unemployment is
high, but it could cause the freezing of other destinations. In the 1990s Cyprus was confronted
with a shortage of manpower and this was considered as an obstacle to its development as a
tourist destination.