Foreign workers in demand
CORFU. Corfu cannot maintain its position as a leading tourist destination without sufficient staff. Initially, it was the large businesses that were asking for workers; now the need has extended to smaller ones as well.
The request by seasonal catering businesses to be explicitly included among those allowed to hire workers from third countries highlights the pressure facing the labour market. This is also the subject of a related event organised by the Chamber of Commerce, while its Secretary General, V. Vasilakis—who is also President of the Catering Association—was the one who took the lead in bringing the issue before Parliament. The aim is to ensure an explicit provision covering seasonal food service businesses as well. The matter will be discussed following a question submitted by the Secretary of the PASOK–KINAL parliamentary group and MP for Corfu, Dimitris Biagis.
In his question, the MP notes: “Under the current framework, a regime of unequal treatment is maintained, since although food service businesses are formally included in the possibility of submitting a request to invite workers for dependent employment, in practice the relevant provision appears to be limited exclusively to hotels and tourist accommodations.”
“The failure to include these businesses in the relevant list of sectors for seasonal employment creates unequal conditions and undermines their viability during a critical period for small and medium-sized enterprises and for tourism, especially in the country’s island tourist regions,” the MP states, among other points in his question.
However, according to the interpretation of the Ministry of Employment’s services, the apparent omission of the term “seasonal tourism food service business” in Act 35 does not mean that the recruitment of such workers is prohibited; rather, the positions have been allocated to broader categories (e.g. “seasonal work in tourism”) without further specifying sub-sectors in the numerical table of the Act. If Act 35 is based on Article 26 of Law 5038/2023 and the annual determination of positions, then food service falls under the broader tourism sector category of “seasonal work” and is covered by the total number of positions provided for in the Act, rather than as a separate subcategory.
GIORGOS KATSAITIS
