On February 11, 2022, the approximately 3,000 workers in the customer service of the booking platform booking.com invited to a video conference appointment. There their boss Glenn Fogel, CEO of the Dutch platform company, told them that they would soon no longer be with booking.com will work. Twelve locations around the world are going to the call center operator Majorel. The German location in Berlin with around 340 employees is also affected. Little is currently known about what the change of operator means exactly, but the fear among the employees is great: “We are left completely in the dark. Our boss talks about how important it is to remain flexible, but I don’t even know if I’ll be able to pay my rent in the summer,” reports employee Elena Papadakis (name changed), the at booking.com Hotels supported when they have problems with bookings.
The unions know Majorel
Majorel is no stranger. At the Verdi union responsible, one is certain that the location task of booking.com no change for the better means: “We already know Majorel,” says trade union secretary Sandra Döding. “So far, they’re barely paying minimum wage. at booking.com it’s still 15 euros an hour.” Facebook, for example, is another of Majorel’s customers in Berlin. In January 2020, the working conditions of the extinguishing teams employed there became public: Despite the high level of psychological stress, Majorel paid them lower wages than is usual in the industry, and almost all of the contracts here were limited. The latter in particular makes it difficult to organize the employees at Majorel, who are almost all young, come from abroad and do not know their rights.
For the tourism industry, the corona crisis means slumps, but even during the boom times, little of the billions in sales reached the employees: booking.com-As early as ten years ago, employees reported that they were overworked, pressured, controlled – and had to report a lot of sick leave. In April 2015, they therefore founded a works council. Since then, things have partly gone uphill again, even if they have not been able to fight for a collective agreement to this day. Now the sale to Majorel is not the first time that the Dutch group has made negative headlines in the corona crisis: booking.com had received corona aid of 90 million from different countries, but still laid off thousands of employees. Wages were cut for those who remained and then annual bonuses of 28 million euros were paid to their own managers.