Hotel workers struggle to live
Sri Lanka’s hotel workers are struggling to survive as they have been thrown into a pitiful state with a meagre salary and no extra payments to sustain them as the pandemic continues.
With rising cost of loans, absence of service charges and tips, and no extra jobs to sustain their livelihoods, hotel workers are urging the authorities to provide them a standard payment as some claim they are the lowest paid workers in the country today.
In this respect, workers took to the streets starting in Aluthgama on Monday under the JVP led Hotel Workers Centre trade union staging a protest to insist that their grievances be met with by the authorities.
Contract workers were laid off at the start of the pandemic last year and some hotels that closed operations are unable to pay workers, Hotel Workers Centre National Organiser Jayatilleke Ranasinghe told the Business Times.
He noted that economically workers were in a crisis and in this respect workers want an interim payment to be made to them in addition to their salaries.
In the absence of the service charge the trade unions are requesting the employers to pay at least Rs.15,000 in addition to their salaries. Mr. Ranasinghe pointed out that personal loans obtained by these workers are being charged interest during this period when they are allowed to postpone their payments.
Moreover, he explained that as frontline staff they need to be provided the vaccination as well which is not happening at the extent to which it should.
Hotel workers are on the lowest scale of salaries in the country, Mr. Ranasinghe explained adding that the payment scheme of paying half the salary or Rs.14,500 whichever is higher is not accepted by the employers today.
Hotel Workers Centre trade union member and Dolphin Hotel TU Chairman Chaminda Fernando said that they were working on a shift basis in a bio bubble.
Ever since the hotel was converted to a quarantine centre it has been paying staff their full salaries although at the start of the pandemic they too were subject to a reduction in their salaries by about 7.5 per cent.
Mr. Fernando explained that workers who used to be able to earn more by carrying out catering services or working as barmen at cocktail parties are not able to do so as events have come to a standstill.
In the meantime, while some were asked to leave, others have left due to low salaries, he said adding that at present they are comfortable since they are paid their full salaries.
Most hotel workers earn less than Rs.20,000 as their salaries and in the absence of service charges, a majority of the workers are compelled to live off salaries in the range of Rs.12-15,000.