The 20,000 housemaids who work in hotels in the Balearic Islands, the kellys, will have their workloads and the maximum number of rooms they have to clean in each establishment defined from this same season. This is one of the aspects included in the hospitality agreement of the Islands, which will be launched very soon, once the Government of Francina Armengol has already defined the criteria that will be followed to assign these charges.
This document, which was presented yesterday by the President of the Government together with trade union and business representatives from the tourism sector, is a pioneering methodology in Spain that defines from how many rooms and tasks they will be able to undertake in a day to the safety conditions and adequate health in which the work must be carried out.
The charges are defined based on a multitude of factors, including, for example, the category of the hotel, the age of the housekeeper, the dimensions of the rooms or whether or not they have services such as terrace, as well as the materials with which the rooms are built, since some, such as glass, represent more work. It is the first work of this kind in all of Spain to measure the workload of housekeepers, and it responds to a historical claim of these employees.
Hoteliers are obliged to set up a working group made up of workers and managers, which will define a safe and healthy method of work based on the analysis of all these factors. The Labor Inspectorate may intervene so that the work method is correctly defined. The Armengol Government insists that this is a methodology for mandatory compliance by tourist establishments starting this season, since it was incorporated into the agreements of the new hospitality collective agreement.
“This initiative positions us again as pioneers of what makes us fairer: working for the occupational health of housekeepers”, pointed out the president of the Balearic Government. Armengol recalled that these occupational health measures are added to others adopted a long time ago, such as the obligation for all hotels in the Balearic Islands to change their current beds, about 300,000, for liftable beds to facilitate the work of these employees
President Armengol stated that in order to be leaders in economic matters, companies must work well and none of them will do so if there are no good workers, and there are no good workers if there are no good working conditions “.
The analysis of workloads was already incorporated into the tripartite agreement signed by the Government and the economic and social agents, and which was later reflected in the collective agreement of the Balearic Islands hospitality industry between employers and trade unions. The change of beds and the regulation of the kellys’ workloads have been agreed with the employers, who agreed to include this requirement in the agreement. In this same agreement, a salary increase of 8.5% over two years was approved, which is added to the previous 17%. The increase will have been 25.5% in seven years.
The approval of this proposal comes amid political controversy in the Islands after the president of the Balearic PP and candidate for the May elections, Marga Prohens, defined the obligation to install raised beds as “the greatest nonsense in tourism policy”. The CEO of the Riu chain, Carme Riu, spoke out against these words and assured that the obligation to install this type of bed is one of the best decisions that have been made in Islands in recent years. The obligation is contained in the new Tourism Law of the Balearic Islands.
