Mediation underway for the hotel and restaurant industry

The parties met on Saturday morning at the Ombudsman’s office.

The deadline expires at midnight on Monday night. It is Fellesforbundet and Parat that negotiate with NHO Reiseliv.

If there is no agreement, members go on strike. The union has announced that they are laying off 1,518 employees in 77 companies. Parat is laying off 262 employees in three companies.

– Expect a pay rise

stopped members have clear expectations of a pay rise following several years of falling real wages, declares dealer Turid Svendsen.

– These workers have physically demanding work and many work in the evenings, weekends and public holidays and without a fixed number of hours. In our opinion, basic salary and bonuses are not high enough to compensate for the obviously higher health risk that such unpredictable working hours entail, she says.

– Pressured industry

NHO Reiseliv points out that the share of wage costs in the accommodation and catering industry is much higher than the average in other industries. In 2022, 36.9 per cent of the expenditure kroner went to wages.

At the same time, it shows that the industry has been under pressure. Higher interest rates combined with high raw material prices, electricity prices, labor costs and fewer bookings are the backdrop that affects many companies, according to NHO Reiseliv.

– A sharp wage increase on top of this will be difficult for many tourism companies to handle, they write on their website.