Ukraine: tour operators are asking for simplifications and interventions for social safety nets

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Many thousands of travel agency and tour operator employees risk running out of social safety nets. This is the alarm that comes from Astoi Confindustria Viaggi in the light of what has been published in the Ukrainian decree law which provides for another eight weeks of wage integration (Fis) for employees of companies up to 15 workers. The granting of an additional eight weeks of FIS allowance for companies under 15 employees was a necessary measure because, once the available quota was exhausted, i.e. 13 weeks for up to 5 employees and 26 weeks for 5 to 15 employees, the employees of these companies they wouldn’t have any other type of shock absorber.
The Dl Ukraine excludes the largest companies and most of the tour operators. Before the pandemic, the sector had a turnover of 13.3 billion thanks to 13 thousand companies with about 86 thousand employees. Hence the request of Astoi Confindustria Viaggi to the Government for the adoption of ad hoc measures also for the more structured companies or the granting of additional weeks of FIS salary integration allowance also to companies with more than 15 employees or, alternatively, not to count , even partially, the salary integration periods used from January to March 2022 in the calculation of the maximum duration of the treatments. If these corrections are not practicable, at least a substantial simplification of the procedures related to the CIGS is requested. In fact, Confindustria Viaggi reports that the causal “corporate crisis” provides for a technical report, a recovery plan and other procedural tasks that are badly reconciled with the protracted emergency in which the sector continues to pay. In addition, some companies that were entitled to the Cigs before the reform, have activated it for some time and have therefore already benefited from a good part of the maximum period foreseen which covers the span of 12 months. In addition, the reasons for accessing the Cigs are not entirely consistent with the crisis in the sector caused by Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine.