The restaurant and leisure employers' associations will not adhere to the hospitality agreement.

PalmThe main employers' associations in the restaurant and leisure sector announced this Tuesday that they will not join in the hospitality agreementIn a statement, they expressed their "deep disappointment and rejection" of the preliminary agreement signed this Monday between the Hotel Business Federation of Mallorca (FEHM) and the UGT union to renew the Balearic Islands' hospitality industry agreement. This agreement, they denounce, was reached behind closed doors and without the presence or participation of key sectors such as the restaurant and leisure industries, which "generate the majority of employment and contribute significantly to Social Security contributions." "We cannot sign an agreement that we have not been able to discuss or negotiate. We have been excluded from the decisive meeting, which constitutes a serious violation of the principle of good faith in collective bargaining," they stated.

They also criticized the 13.5% salary increase over three years, which, they assert, is designed for large hotels with economies of scale and significant profits, but which "is unsustainable" for small restaurant and leisure businesses, who work with very tight margins and different economic conditions.

In this regard, the associations—the Mallorcan Association of Cafes, Bars, and Restaurants (Restauración Mallorca CAEB), the Menorcan Association of Cafes, Bars, and Restaurants, the Association of Bars, Cafes, and Restaurants of Ibiza and Formentera (Pimeef Restauración), and the Balearic Association of Leisure and Entertainment—are working intensively "with the aim of incorporating specific and differentiated aspects into the collective agreement that reflect the reality of thousands of self-employed workers and micro-SMEs, whose operations are far removed from those of large hotels." "It is incomprehensible that we are being excluded from the meeting, especially after having invested so many hours and efforts to defend the specific characteristics of our sector," they emphasized.

Among the proposals that the employers' associations wanted to include and that have been left out of the agreement are adjustments to remuneration, greater versatility in professional categories, flexibility in job calls, the possibility of interrupting fixed-discontinuous contracts based on seasonality and specific events, and the creation of youth training.

They assert that the situation is worrying in Menorca, Ibiza, and Formentera, where geographical dispersion, marked seasonality, and ultra-reduced workforces increase operating costs, warning that the agreed agreement completely ignores these critical factors.

"Our aspiration is to have our own negotiating area where our unique characteristics are clearly reflected, either through a specific agreement or through an appendix to the general agreement," they explain. "We are the second most productive and representative sector in the Balearic Islands, and our economic and labor reality cannot be ignored," they concluded.

This outright rejection, they concluded, opens a period of uncertainty in labor relations in the Balearic hospitality industry, demanding "urgent action to resolve the situation before it negatively impacts the height of the tourist season."