Hotel Workers in Greece to See Pay Rise After New Labor Deal Signed

Some 160,000 hotel employees in Greece will see their salaries go up by 10.5 percent over the next two years, following the signing of the new collective labor agreement between the Hellenic Hoteliers Federation and the Panhellenic Federation of Employees in F&B and Tourism (POEET).

Signed on Thursday, the agreement has a two-year duration (January 1, 2023 to December 31, 2024) and provides for a 5.5 percent minimum wage increase for the first year (2023) and an additional 5 percent increase for the second year (2024).

Among other things, the renewed collective labor agreement resolves various issues with regard to the workplace with a special focus on hotel workers employed at lower category and capacity units that face problems due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the increase in energy costs and inflation.

In an announcement, the Hellenic Hoteliers Federation said the renewal of the labor agreement will allow Greek tourism to continue to lead the economic recovery of Greece in times of crisis.

“Today is a historic moment for Greek tourism,” the federation’s president, Grigoris Tasios, said, adding that hotels and their employees have finally managed to get back to where they were before austerity measures were imposed on Greece some ten years ago.

“With the salary increases that were agreed, we not only cover the current inflation but we are now restoring wages to pre-memorandum levels,” he said.