Not quite forgotten, but training is key to Balearic hopes for economic transformation

These negotiations should be of major interest to us all. They relate to the largest employment sector - around 180,000 workers - and can set something of a benchmark for other sectors. More than this, there is the potential for industrial conflict if the negotiations continue to go as unsatisfactorily as they currently are. If tourism critics are true to their word, it could be that the season is marked by protests of a housing/tourism character sharing street space with hospitality workers. Were this to be the case, well you can imagine. Give the media an inch, the UK press in particular, and they will go the full mile in highlighting ever more ‘panic’, ‘crisis’ or ‘chaos’ (whichever hyperbolic noun suits best).

While salaries and the working week provide the headlines for these negotiations, buried within them is an issue that is every bit as important but which singularly fails to grab the headlines. It is also far from exclusively being an issue just for one industry. It matters across the board, but the problem is that training simply fails to hold people’s attention. And in no small part, it can seem as if it fails to have the attention of negotiators as well. It comes under any other business. Or this an impression. There again, it is covered by what the hospitality employers mean by modernisation.

In advance of the talks, the president of the Mallorca Hoteliers Federation, Javier Vich, emphasised the importance of training in order to give the hospitality industry “prestige”. This very statement did rather sum up the status of training. By implication it suggested that the industry lacked prestige. He wouldn’t have meant this, but it was nevertheless unfortunate if such an interpretation was made.

In March ten years ago, students from the hospitality school went along to a milk round at which various hotel groups and others were represented. The school’s director said that in the previous few years these businesses had been paying greater attention to the need for training and for professionals who are ever more specialised. As such, there was something of a giveaway in what he said. “In the previous few years.” What had these businesses been doing before?

Around the same time, there was talk of the big-four hotel chains (Barceló, Iberostar, Meliá, Riu) and TUI, together with the ESADE Business School, creating a post-graduate, executive tourism school on the island. This was for a specific profile of employee, yet the very fact that leading tourism companies were wanting to create their own business school begged a question as to the industry’s involvement in tourism education. When the director of the hospitality school suggested that the industry was only now paying greater attention to the need for training, perhaps it was more a case that the industry hadn’t considered the training to be relevant to its needs. And he offered a clue about the nature of this training when referring to ever greater specialisation.

The dynamics have certainly moved on since 2015. There is that much greater commitment to training (or said to be anyway), and this was reflected in the last collective bargaining agreement (2023). This incorporated an investment of 40 million euros directly in training plus a further 16 million for an urgent plan to promote the accreditation of professional skills and aid to employees who wanted more (or any) training. Crucially perhaps, this was a tripartite agreement. The previous government was party to it, much having been said about the role of training in improving the quality of employment and so therefore greater job security and higher pay as well as higher productivity.

These aims haven’t altered, it’s just that the current government isn’t actively involved. But the government is well aware, as employers are, that there is a qualification deficit, not helped by the Balearics having the highest early-school-leaving dropout rate in the country. The public education system is increasingly having to focus on vocational training as a means of addressing a deficit that has become ever more challenging than it was ten years ago. This is because the dynamics have made it so. A transition to the green economy is just one factor, in itself a key one for the Balearics as the islands strive for an economic model less dependent on tourism and capable of recapturing a former status (back in the 1990s) of boasting a per capita income that was among the highest if not the highest in Spain.

Antoni Riera, the technical director of the Fundació Impulsa and a central figure in the government’s sustainability pact for a transformation of the tourism industry, said in December that there were “insufficient educational opportunities” for higher value-added employment in the green economy. A lack of workers, meaning those with sufficient qualification, as well as the lack of generational renewal in general towards a more diverse model, was “a clear threat to the Balearic economy”.

“Without a workforce trained to lead the green transition, the islands will lose their adaptability and development opportunities, which in turn will limit economic growth and resilience to future challenges.”

Riera bemoaned the fact that there was “direct competition” for jobs from the service sector - tourism most obviously - “which offers a quick entry into the labour market”. A quick entry, yes, but the entry of a workforce not equipped for the challenges being presented, including those faced by the very industry into which there is quick entry. There are jobs in the service sector, but the employers recognise the deficiencies. As also do the unions, who are pressing demands for enhanced training but obscuring these by their headline insistence on pay rises the employers feel they can’t stomach.
There is a paradox. Riera rightly points to a quick entry, but at the same time young employees are now looking for more than just a job. Benoît-Etienne Domenget is the CEO of the Lausanne-based Sommet Education, specialists in hospitality management education. He says these employees want the opportunity for professional growth and for developing new skills (digitalisation is frequently cited).

“Companies that invest in continuous education create an environment where employees feel valued and empowered, leading to higher job satisfaction and retention.” His interest lies with the hospitality industry, but his observation applies in general, and the general picture isn’t wholly encouraging, regardless of individual businesses’ initiatives to boost training.

The most recent survey of training expenditure in the Balearics was published last month. This came from the Observatory of Vocational Training, with which CaixaBank is closely involved. This revealed that companies’ average investment in training per worker in Spain in 2023 was 70.32 euros. In the Balearics this was 39.48 euros. This average clearly reflected different sectors, with construction only on 16.23 euros. But the services sector as a whole was only marginally higher than the overall average - 41.43 euros.

Training isn’t a forgotten element of negotiations, but how much “prestige” is attached to it. We may be about to find out, even if it is in the small print below salaries.