The Tourism Secretariat of PAME met and summed up the situation that the workers are dealing with all across the country. At the same time, it set the basic duties of the trade unions before the beggining of this year’s tourist season.

 Both at the introduction and at the interventions of all the trade unionists came up the problems of the workers in the sector but also the experience that the trade unions have gathered through their every day struggles and action.

 As it was highlighted while the big tourist businesses grow their profits with the raise of the tourist movement, the attack that the workers are facing is multiplied in many levels, banishing the belief that everyone will find work this period. Big Hotels through the programs for the unemployed and students internships, they are exploiting young people and are provided with “free” workers.

 Hundreds of thousands of seasonal workers are now left without any unemployment benefit. It is also a generalized phenomenon that many workers are still unpaid from the last season. The forces of PAME are fighting so that everyone will be given unemployment benefit, for rehiring the seasonal workers, to put a stop to the individual contracts. They are fighting, and in many regions are succeeding, so that the workers will not work for 10 hours a day, with no day off until the season ends and then they are left with no job and no unemployment benefit for the rest of the year.

 After the meeting, the Tourism Secretariat participated in the protest outside the Ministry of Labour, demanding immediate measures for the protection of the unemployed.

Athens, 27.3.15