GREEK hotel workers are set to walk out on strike today in a dispute over staff shortages and wage stagnation as the tourist season is in full swing. 

Workers said they were forced to act as “the miserable situation we are experiencing inside the workplace continues.”

Staff shortages are a choice deliberately made by employers despite hotel occupancy rates reaching 100 per cent and revenues close to the pre-pandemic levels, trade unions said.  

Wages remain frozen at 2007 levels, they say, with more work being carried out by fewer workers so hotel bosses can boost their profits. 

Unions warn that the industry is plagued by temporary contracts and temporary employment with what they describe as “outsourcing slave-trade agencies” making vast profits from hiring out workers to the majority of hotels. 

They say this is evidence of a drive toward the complete abolition of permanent and stable employment and the growth of insecure work based on the needs of the big hotels. 

Athens Hotel Workers Union said they were striking because rising inflation meant they were “unable to afford the basic necessities to support our families.”

“We are in a struggle for salary increases and a collective agreement to secure our working rights,” its president George Stefanakis said, adding: “We will not become slaves.”

Hotel and restaurant workers took strike action on June 24 demanding a collective agreement but the bosses have so far rejected the demand, insisting that a national sectoral agreement is in place. 

The All Workers Militant Front (Pame) hit out at the response from hoteliers who offered a measly sum to the strikers in a bid to stave off further action. 

“They thought that by giving a little money, which is not even enough to cover an electricity bill and even in the form of an extraordinary bonus without being incorporated as a permanent wage increase, they would manage to buy us off,” the union said, branding bosses “delusional.”

Unions are calling for a guarantee of the five-day working week and an eight-hour day and the recruitment of more staff to address the shortages along with the abolition of flexible working. 

Workers will gather from 9am at the Elektra Hotel in Athens for a rally.