Legislation will regulate working time in hotels and catering

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With the social partners unable to agree on working time in Luxembourg's hotels and catering sector through collective agreement, the Minister of Labour announced in December 1999 that he will be introducing legislation on the issue over the next few years.

The hotels and catering sector in Luxembourg (known as HORESCA) employs 11,000 staff, 95% of whom are foreign nationals. Unusually, there is hardly any legislation governing working time in this industry, due to the fact that in 1970 legialators left it to the sector's social partners to agree on working time through collective agreements. However, they have not always succeeded in doing so.

It emerged during recent negotiations that the HORESCA employers' group had no wish to conclude a new collective agreement in the sector, being particularly concerned about the effects on competition with other countries. On 15 December 1999, the Minister of Labour thus met representatives of the employers and of the Luxembourg Confederation of Independent Trade Unions (Onofhängege Gewerkschafts-Bond Lëtzebuerg, OGB-L) and Luxembourg Confederation of Christian Trade Unions (Lëtzebuerger Chrëschtleche Gewerkschafts-Bond, LCGB), with a view to determining their definitive positions on the possibility of introducing working time legislation in the sector.

The Minister stated that the issue could not be resolved by a collective agreement, "but that the parties have agreed that the matter should be regulated by legislation over the next few years".

The OGB-L presented the Minister with a long list of proposals aimed at reducing general working time to a 40-hour week. The union also proposed a number of flexible working models adapted to the sector's three categories of establishment, the existence of which makes it impossible to regulate working hours uniformly.