An unfolding situation in Agadir, Morocco, demonstrates how the COVID pandemic continues to severely affect the workers staffing the global tourism and hospitality trade. The Riad Mogador hotel chain benefited from state support during the worst of the pandemic, and then laid off as many as eight hundred employees just as the trade began to recover.
Agadir attracts mostly European visitors with its long beach and mild climate. An earthquake totally destroyed the town in 1960, after which it became a tourist resort built almost from scratch. In October 2022 I met by chance a dozen or so laid-off workers near the seafront, where they have occupied their former workplace for a year and a half. Over a hundred workers have joined the industrial action, hoping that this strike will force their bosses to pay them their lost earnings. After this encounter I shared a meal with them and witnessed their resolute spirit and optimistic activity.
The hospitality industry already relied heavily on low-paid, seasonal or precarious workers with diminished labour rights compared to other sectors with greater union density. But the influential owners of large businesses leveraged their importance to developing national economies, in Morocco and elsewhere. With many governments fearing the total collapse of this valuable industry, a private grab of public funds has taken place, along with an increased immiseration of the workforce.
Within walking distance of Agadir’s famous beachfront, I met the hotel workers who have experienced first hand these developments. Left without recourse, the terminated workers of the Mogador Al Madina hotel began daily demonstrations in July 2021. They have occupied a prominent portico on Boulevard du 20 Août since the bosses hired guards from the private security company Athena to keep them away from the main entrance of the hotel. Restaurants, hotels and shops used to make this a bustling touristic neighbourhood, but the continued lack of visitors has created a permanent lull.
What was formerly the back entrance to the hotel is now occupied round the clock by strikers. Several arches carry signs, flags, and colourful rugs.The strikers identified this as a strategic location as it gives them exposure to people of many nationalities. They receive no strike pay or unemployment benefits, but rely largely on the support of passersby, especially tourists. Around thirty workers demonstrate twice daily on the boulevard with songs and chants. In total, 136 workers from this single hotel have joined the strike, supported by the Confédération Démocratique du Travail, one of Morocco’s largest trade unions.
Many other hospitality workers have experienced similar hardships. In the first half of 2020, governments around the world locked down hospitality businesses and closed international borders, putting a stop to tourism overnight. Many restrictions have now ended – widespread vaccination (at least in richer countries) has reduced the infection risk, and state policy now accepts a certain level of disease as the cost of protecting economies. But the same workers who endured the worst effects of the pandemic still struggle to survive as things return to “normal”.
Morocco has the fifth largest economy in Africa, with about 8% of GDP coming from international tourism. In absolute terms the country has a tourism economy similar in size to that of Egypt and South Africa, despite its much lower total GDP. Many visitors to Agadir stayed in the two local Riad Mogador hotels, a chain run by the wealthy Chaâbi dynasty. Under founder Miloud Chaâbi the family business began manufacturing ceramics in the 1960s, before diversifying into packaging, electrical manufacturing, and infrastructure construction. In the late 1990s the company moved into retail and later the hotel business. Now YNNA Holding, the parent company of Riad Mogador, employs twenty thousand workers – the largest private employer in the country.
The testimony of workers at the Agadir hotel calls into question the narrative of a company trying to do their best for employees under difficult circumstances. The Moroccan state closed international borders on the 15th March 2020 and began paying a 2000 dirhams (US$180) monthly stipend to workers whose employers could not pay wages due to a lack of business. In addition, the state provided family allowances, Obligatory Medical Insurance, and suspended bank loan repayments. The Brookings Institute stated that 89% of registered tourism businesses in Morocco suspended operations due to the pandemic, leading to a predicted US$14b loss between 2020 and 2022. Tourist arrivals in 2021 fell by 71%.
As well as becoming some of the richest people in Africa, the Chaâbi family have also become embedded in the Moroccan political establishment. This has given them a high level of influence over the policy and economic decisions that favour their own businesses. Miloud Chaâbi himself served as a member of parliament for thirty years; his daughter Asma became mayor of their hometown Essaouira and later succeeded her father as MP. (Essaouira, itself a tourist destination, hosts another Mogador hotel.) Miloud Chaâbi’s sons Mohcine, Mohamed and Faouzi have also taken seats in the House of Representatives.
However, since Miloud Chaâbi’s death in 2016 the company’s fortunes have faltered. The COVID pandemic may have provided an opportunity to profitably reduce the size of the hotel business. In a January 2022 interview with Moroccan economic newspaper Médias24, Omar Chaâbi (Miloud’s son and now vice-president of YNNA Holding) denied this intention. Some hotel companies used public funds to successfully keep workers employed in expectation of a rapid economic recovery. In contrast the Riad Mogador chain benefited from the government grants to cover payroll costs during the closure period, then laid off as many as eight hundred staff just as hospitality businesses began to recover.
Accordingly, only three of the twelve hotels run by YNNA Holding at the end of 2019 had open doors at the start of 2022. The five star Grand Mogador locations in Casablanca and Tangiers remained open throughout, as did the four star Marina hotel in Casablanca. These locations catered to the domestic business market rather than international tourism, and so weathered the COVID storm somewhat more easily. But in the tourist epicentre Marrakech they closed seven hotels (nearly ⅕ of the city’s bed capacity), in addition to two hotels in Agadir and one in Essaouira. Since then, several have reopened for bookings, with the exception of Mogador Opera and Mogador Express Gueliz (Marrakech) and Mogador Al Madina (Agadir).
The workers in Agadir told me that at the onset of the pandemic they had always considered their workplace a good one. They saw the closures as justified, although the lack of greater support for the tourism industry did lead to protests across the country. Many workers never qualified for state support due to working in Morocco’s large informal economy. Informal workers, who do not pay taxes and often lack labour rights and union representation, contribute as much as 40% of Morocco’s GDP according to some estimates. Only around a third of Moroccan workers have an official written contract of employment. Likewise hospitality businesses outside tourist hotspots, such as local hotels, often failed to qualify for government support intended largely to rescue the international tourist economy. Even those who did receive the COVID stipend found it insufficient – the payments equalled only half the average salary, and the majority of households have only a single earner.
For seven months the Agadir hotel workers remained under contract, although their salaries had stopped. Local governments used some of the Mogador hotels for hosting doctors, nurses or COVID patients, mostly staffed by external companies. The outlook changed in October 2020, when the director of human resources held a meeting at the Agadir hotel with two lawyers. According to the workers, she warned that management planned to close the hotel permanently, which would terminate their contracts and leave them without their COVID indemnity payments. At this point staff delegates and union representatives from the Confédération Démocratique du Travail still expected to find an amicable resolution according to the law. Under the 2003 Labour Code, a local commission (composed of representatives of the state, the employer and the trade unions) must authorise mass layoffs for economic reasons; the law also regulates the required compensation due to employees.
Over the next several months, the workers appealed to local, regional and national labour authorities, while the hotel administration gave the impression that they might go back on their plans to close the hotel for good. In fact, management seemed to have changed their minds, and gave them assurances that the hotel would reopen when the law allowed them to do so.
On the 1st April 2021 the workers returned to the hotel for work, only to find the doors locked. Many other workers across the tourism sector have found themselves in a similar position – with their contracts terminated or left unrenewed, they cannot claim what little support the government provides. Support for the government’s strict restrictions has also fallen over time, with two hundred and fifty travel agents protesting in January 2022 outside the Ministry of Tourism against the extension of the state of emergency.
YNNA Holding executives have claimed that the employees received compensation but the workers dispute this. Some did accept a severance package, but most have refused it as it excluded compensation for damage, lack of notice, and holiday entitlement. In total the proposed compensation comes to a third of the amount required by the Labour Code. Consequently, the strikers have taken to highly visible protests as the best way to put pressure on their employers.
The protest has brought the bosses to the negotiating table, but without much success. The Regional Committee for Dialogue and Reconciliation (a labour arbitration body) met in May 2022, and the hotel management promised to resolve the crisis and reopen the hotel in that tourist season. The reopening of air transit into Morocco in February 2022 raised hopes, but as the economy recovers many workers feel left behind. Since the borders reopened, the monthly stipend pay has ceased. Across the tourism and hospitality business, many workers have returned to work but several of the Mogador hotels remain closed. I visited the strike in October and found the hotel still closed, and it has not reopened in the weeks since. This calls into question the economic arguments for the redundancies – just as things began to improve in the tourism sector, YNNA Holding seems increasingly determined to close the hotel.
The strike holds firm regardless, although the quiet winter period brings fewer opportunities to spread the word of their struggle to passing visitors. Three shifts of workers occupy the site 24/7. The rank-and-file employee representatives meet daily, discussing the work of the strike and the practical details of the occupation. I talked with the workers over a lunch of chicken in a traditional olive and onion sauce, cooked by the strikers on portable gas stoves. Despite their difficult situation, they not only provide for themselves but were also quick to invite me to share food with them. Against the global backdrop of states and corporations using the COVID pandemic to challenge people’s rights in the workplace, this little autonomous space provides a heartening example of workers using self-organisation to demand their rights. As their campaign enters its third calendar year, they refuse to give up.
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