Dear Editor,
It’s always good to hear that more jobs are being created in the tourism sector.
However, I cannot help but wonder if the people who are taking them are enjoying all the rights they are entitled to.
My son worked at a hotel in the Portimão area where most days of the week he’d end up working much more than the eight hours he was supposed to.
They’d pay him overtime, but the general idea was that if he was not willing to work more than the eight daily hours stipulated by the Portuguese law, the hotel managers would find someone else who would.
My son is still a young man so he could pull off 11 or 13-hour shifts, but by the end of the summer he was totally depleted. He needed the money and knew that if he refused to work such long hours, it would be extremely hard to find another job in the middle of summer when most positions are already taken.
This is something that I know happens a lot in the Algarve, and that bosses take advantage of.
This was four years ago, and hopefully things have been improving since then, but I hope this is something authorities will take into account now that more jobs in the sector are popping up.
Carlos Rodrigues
Portimão
