Mass Versus Quality: Hotel Jobs

Now here's an interesting point. Workers in the food and beverage sector - chefs, waiters and others - are willing to take jobs for lower salaries if the conditions are more to their liking. In other words, if a hotel (this mainly applies to hotels, but not exclusively) provides a working environment with a commitment to training, to high standards and good professional relations, it will attract talented personnel prepared to accept less money than they would receive at an establishment without these attributes.

The point is made by Antonio de Juan, who is the CEO of Talent Chef, a company which specialises in recruitment for the food and beverage sector. His words have been quoted in an article in Hosteltur magazine. It is a particularly interesting point, given the Balearic government's insistence on employment quality and salaries to match. In certain instances, it seems that workers will forego the quality salaries in preference to the quality employment: the government appears to have its work cut out in pairing the two.

De Juan's conclusion is that a tourism of the masses without quality has repercussions for the quality of personnel and for their availability. The matching of higher salaries and higher standards of employment can be found in some overseas countries. There is therefore a drain of talent from Mallorcan and Spanish hotels because of this.

A problem is, and it is another one that the government would like to deal with, creating tourism of the masses with quality. The notion can seem mutually exclusive. How do you retain mass and also ensure quality? It depends on how mass is defined, but in Mallorca the mass is increasing without a discernible impact on quality. This is the evidence, for instance, of hotels in Magalluf chucking out more badly behaved tourists than ever before. So long as tour operators and hotels operate according to principles of mass and volume, the situation is unlikely to change. The mayor of Calvia might plead with the providers of tourists, but he can't mandate what type of client is brought. This is the very point that the mayor of Alcudia has made regarding spring-break students, the cause - so it is said - of much of the Magalluf malaise this year. Town halls, regional governments have no power over this type of business decision.

One feels for people who work in some hotels in Mallorca. Chefs, who might earn decent money, churn out stuff for the masses. Their talent goes to waste. Their professional abilities are not reflected in their output. The same applies in the bar/restaurant sector.

Clearly, though, this doesn't apply across the board and also doesn't apply solely to the kitchens. One goes to somewhere like the Meliá Palma Bay Hotel and can witness the fine attention to detail and scrutiny in preparing tables. The quality of personnel extends to management. This same attention was evident in a tour of the five-star Palace de Muro Hotel. It was from the now director who, once upon a time, had been on the management at Bellevue in Alcudia. A very different place, during a tour there much time was spent picking up litter. A forlorn task, but at least there was a constant attempt at dealing with the downsides of mass all-inclusive tourism.

Mallorca has the means of developing talent. The university's Hotel and Catering School, to give one example, is where certain Michelin-starred chefs in Mallorca trained and received instruction. Some hotel chains have their own in-house training set-ups. Their commitment to quality has been exported. A reason for high standards elsewhere is the insistence on quality that characterises the likes of Iberostar.

But in Mallorca there is a vast gulf, which is the consequence of the diversity of hotels. In order to satisfy the masses, this is inevitable. So, one wonders if the mutually exclusive notion of mass and quality can ever be harmonised. One very much doubts it, and so there will be an enduring mismatch between the quality of salaries and employment.

The government, of course, is more concerned with an employment quality in terms of contracts: full-time, well-paid, adherence to strict working hours would be ideal. But it also concerned with the nature of jobs, given that they reflect the overall quality (or not) of the tourism offer. The hoteliers' federation is on the same page in this regard. It advocates quality without a loss of quantity. But what quality do they put first? The job or the pay? Is it both? In some cases, yes, but not all. The federation is set for a major scrap over pay negotiations next year. Unions are demanding that their profits go towards significant pay increases. If these are forced through, are passed on to already high hotel prices, have ever more tourist tax added, the mass part of the problem might well be solved.

Retailer, Hotelier: Good guy, bad guy

It was the queue of the hopeful. How many of them were there? Hundreds. They went in their droves, enticed by the search for "dynamic, committed, enthusiastic" people of a certain (young) age. Such is the recruitment lingo. When did employers ever wish to take on apathetic, uncommitted, unenthusiastic staff? Once upon a time they probably did. A time when no one much cared for anything other than the pay packet regardless of whatever drudgery was performed or expected.

They were queuing in Madrid last October. Hundreds. They weren't after jobs. They were there to buy. In the capital city's Gran Via, Primark had come to town, and Primark shopping fever had taken over. But jobs with Primark were what mattered last week to those who had waited patiently to hand in their pen drives with all relevant information at the offices of the Balearic Confederation of Business Associations.

Primark will open in September and not towards the end June as had been initially said. FAN Mallorca Shopping, the curious name of the new commercial centre, will not be ready until then. For those queuing it might as well rain until September. Then the sun will shine. Assuming they are the lucky ones. And when the doors of the shopping centre finally open, there will be a tidal wave of shoppers. The roads will have been gridlocked. There's more to FAN, much more to FAN than Primark alone, but it will be the Irish retailer attracting the greatest fan base, if the Madrid experience is anything to go by.

The jobs though, what about the jobs? How much might the lucky ones earn? In Madrid the labour agreement was for a "competitive salary package" for the dynamic ones. The typical sales assistant maximum is just over 15,000 a year - twelve months plus three extras. Over half of the staff, however, are not on full-time contracts. One worker, quoted in a report by the "El Confidencial" website, said she was on 700 euros for a 30-hour week, though this seemed to be for a temporary contract.

Retail jobs are like many in the tourism industry. They are not highly paid. The Primark base salary for full-time employees - 15,247 euros per annum (quoted in connection with the Madrid store) - is virtually identical to the agreement Lidl came to earlier this year. It has a guaranteed fixed hourly minimum of 8.50 euros per hour: 15,257 euros for an annual maximum of 1,795 hours, five days a week. Lidl has also agreed to have a 75% minimum of its staff on full-time contracts.

This doesn't match Mercadona, though. It has 98% full-time contracts. Its base salary is 15,160 euros but it adds two extra months to this depending on performance. It also rewards loyalty. Length of service and corresponding increases in salary mean that it has 90% of staff earning 1,430 euros after tax plus the potential two additional months. Mercadona is looked upon as one of the best employers in the retail sector.

The regional government, the Council of Mallorca and the town halls have an at-times awkward relationship with retailing. The current moratorium on new developments is an example of this and is aimed principally at larger retailers. Yet they will all know that these larger retailers create employment and, as can be seen with Mercadona in particular, this is pretty stable employment. It may not be highly paid, but that is how retailing tends to be. Mallorca's no different to anywhere else in this regard.

Where the public authorities really run into a problem is with seeking to safeguard the smaller retailer and defend it against the voracious appetites of the large multiples. A case in point has been the to-ing and fro-ing over declaring (or not) zones of high touristic influx. Say yes, and there is far greater liberalism for large store opening hours. Say no, and there is not.

But generally, and here is where the government and others let slip their begrudging acceptance of the large retailers, there is no antagonism implied when it comes to terms and conditions of employment. Yes, the government keeps banging the drum for greater "quality" of employment and higher earnings, but the retailers fall into the category of the "good" employer. Mercadona is a prime example.

Contrast this with the general antagonism towards the hoteliers, with Podemos the most ferocious of critics. True, there are issues with maids and some other categories of employee, but the attacks are certainly not always justified. The government is toying with the star ratings being modified to reflect this so-called employment quality. But would such an attempt at labour engineering work? Can the hotels really be blamed for offering contracts that are not in the Mercadona league when it comes to being full-time? It's the seasonality, stupid.

The Illusion Of Purchasing Power

It was one of those statistical tidbits, of which we are fed a vast diet but which, I suspect, we take comparatively little notice, except when there is a nibble to make one wish to digest it. It had to do with purchasing power, defined in this instance as the relationship between consumer prices and average salaries. When I read it or, more accurately, wrote it, because it was a news item from the statistics bombarders of the news syndicates, it did for once make me stop and think. Not, as is sometimes the case, to try and fathom out what contradictory or erroneous message was being conveyed - trust me, this stuff is full of mistakes - but because of its implication.

What it said was that purchasing power in the Balearics has fallen this year by 0.9%: not a huge fall by any means but a fall nonetheless. The explanation for this diminution of power was that prices had risen whilst average salaries had gone down. On the price side, one might think that this was a result of inflation. There is inflation in the Balearics, the highest rate among the regions, but it is currently only 0.6%. There are deflationary pressures in parts of Spain, but not in the Balearics. Only just though. Inflation isn't much of a factor.

But even if it were, there was the fact that average salaries have fallen. How on earth can this be? Are we not supposed to be going through times of economic improvement, of recovery, of growth, of greater business confidence? One could always question the finding, but if it is true and if purchasing power is declining as a consequence, then this all hints at something that the announcements of better times don't: the recovery is not as strong as we're being led to believe.

Easy it would be to say that the positivity - that of politicians, in particular those from the Partido Popular - is all a pre-general election smokescreen: that the recovery is all baloney not matched in reality. Yet, we learn how in the Balearics there is greater buoyancy on the high street (not that there is one in the British sense), there is more spend in restaurants and what have you, there is more being spent at petrol stations. Which may all be true, but how much of it actually comes from the purse of the ordinary Josés of Mallorca (aka Joseps)? The restaurant sector, for example, has been saying that the buoyancy has been mostly confined to the tourism centres, thus implying that it is tourists who are the ones contributing to better times, and of these, it may well be the Brits who are doing much of the contributing, what with the pounds in their pockets stretching to ever greater euro purchasing power.

The retail sector may be a better guide, especially for certain parts of it which are showing good growth: household goods, for instance. As a general rule, tourists don't splash out on things like washing machines as souvenirs, so it's fair to say the growth is local. But this isn't necessarily the case across the whole of the retail sector. The petrol stations are enjoying the spend of the car-rental market, the supermarkets are benefiting from the rise in residential tourism.

Is growth, therefore, purely temporary? Instinctively, you would have to think that it is, given the nature of so much economic and employment activity in Mallorca. And if, underlying this, there is a trend towards reduced purchasing power, then the imbalance of the economy will be more sharply revealed come the winter months.

But this still doesn't explain why it might be that average salaries appear to be falling. Unless, that is, one factors in the growth of seasonal employment. When there are that many more people on low pay, taken on because of increased tourism demand, then the average distribution will tend to show a reduction: a greater proportion of the lower paid will drag down the average of the higher paid.

Does this really matter? In a way it doesn't. It has been ever thus with the seasonal nature of employment, after all. The likelihood might be that purchasing power, following the definition applied here, would rise in winter but only because of all the low-paid who go on the dole. But it does matter from the point of view of all that is being said of the "precarious" nature of this employment, the inherent insecurity and the potential for abuse and exploitation, plus the sheer seasonality of it.

This has been one of the themes of this summer, principally because the new government has made it one. But will this cycle ever be broken? The hoteliers are raising prices massively for next year. Will these result in better pay? Don't bet on it.

MALLORCA TODAY - Pollensa votes against Christmas bonuses

The most recent session of councillors at Pollensa town hall has voted against Christmas bonuses being paid to councillors and some others employed by the town hall. These bonuses aren't really bonuses as such as they are an additional monthly payment at Christmas time, a common system in Spain. The Partido Popular councillors didn't side with the motion but it was carried anyway.

See more: Diario de Mallorca