Finally someone cares about us - Rights for guides project
Since April 2010, the survey for tour guides (local representatives of tour operators), tour managers and entertainers, carried out in the framework of the ETLC project "Rights for Guides", is running www.rights-for-guides.eu.
Many questionnaires have been completed online on the Internet portal, or sent to us by mail or fax. Now project staff visited the airports of Gran Canaria and Mallorca to collect additional information ( 15 to 18 August 2010). The action was supported by the Spanish trade union CCOO. On the spot the colleagues were met with open ears. German and English, Spanish, Belgian, Swedish and Finnish, Swiss and French tour guides described their work situation. What we learned there paints a very detailed picture of the work at the individual tour operators. Without anticipating the outcome of the pending evaluation of all questionnaires, it is already obvious that questions of working time, salary and social benefits play a major role. It also shows that conditions at the individual tour operators vary widely. The scope ranges from satisfactory to hair-raising employment conditions.
Many tour guides emphasized that they like their job, but they wonder whether they can keep on doing it in the long run, considering the constant deterioration of working conditions. "It's like Christmas," was the spontaneous reaction of a colleague, when she learned from us that a collective agreement concluded by the Spanish trade unions has to be applied, which differs significantly from her employment contract, which was changed recently to a Spanish employer. "So far no one showed that he wants to strive for improving our working conditions" she added and described how the working conditions have deteriorated since year and day: less salary, less staff, more work, ...
But we can also report positively, e.g. that those colleagues of TUI, who work under a Spanish employment contract, are now in most destinations represented by a works council. And for those who have an employment contract with, for example, a Swiss company, but work for a certain period of time in Spain, the Spanish labour legislation has to be applied.
More details will be published here in the near future