Yesterday (Tuesday), housekeeping staff for the Brussels luxury Steigenberger Wiltcher’s Grand Hotel on Avenue Louise occupied the hotel entrance in a protest over restructuring that would eliminate 85 jobs and outsource work.
Around 50 of the employees participated in the action, reports Bruzz, and the protest lasted all day.Further protests might take place in the coming days, union representative Didier Mvula (ACV/CSC) told Bruzz.
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“The staff wants it to be not just the bookkeeping that counts,” said Mvula, referring to a profitability study by the hotel’s management that declared that each member of the housekeeping staff would have to clean more rooms.
A struggling sector
Hotel management have said that the hotel sector is still suffering from the coronavirus crisis and that the current fourth wave has led to a new flurry of cancellations.
“To safeguard our business, whose losses run into millions, we have to work on variable costs,” said general manager Michel Cottray, who added that the hotel has been following the law around job elimination. Cottray said that they are still consulting with staff and have discussed various proposals in the past five months but are yet to reach an agreement.
“We are reaching a point where we are closing the consultation round and moving to the next phase,” he said.