Lyon (AFP)

Employees of cafes and restaurants will soon see their tips paid by bank card integrated into their remuneration without being taxed, which should help to attract young people in this sector, hopes the employers, under pressure to improve the attractiveness of these professions.

"We have decided that tips paid by credit card would be free of charge for employers and tax-free for employees" with an implementation "in the coming months," Emmanuel Macron announced on Monday while visiting the International Catering Fair, of the hotel and food industry (SIRHA) which is opening in Lyon.

"This will add to the purchasing power" of employees in the sector.

This measure "does not cost anything, because today it does not work", he added, "because we saw it at the end of the crisis, our compatriots use less and less liquid".

While employment is part, with the fight against the Covid and a vast investment plan, of the priority projects announced by the executive on September 10, seven months before the presidential election, the employers of the hotel and restaurant industry who struggling to recruit - like construction or other sectors - thus saw one of its requests fulfilled, and promptly welcomed it.

"This is something that we have been asking for several years, many countries are doing it. It will encourage young people to come into our professions, boost service, and encourage customers to recognize the quality of service," said Roland Héguy, president of Umih, the main employers' organization in the hotel and restaurant industry, told AFP.

- Money "hitherto invisible" -

If this is one "more tool" to strengthen the attractiveness of a sector which employs a total of 1.2 million employees, including collective catering, this does not exempt employers from reflection. on how to "revalue (these) trades, by improving working conditions and salary scales," he said.

On the terrace of a brasserie in Paris, May 19, 2021 Lucas BARIOULET AFP / Archives

According to Mr. Macron, 110,000 jobs are to be filled in the restoration, the employers even speaking of "150 to 180,000 jobs", without having a reliable estimate at this stage.

The Umih will make "proposals in this direction to the government" and made this subject the theme of its national congress in Strasbourg at the end of November.

"The diagnosis of our weaknesses is known, it is up to us to respond," concluded Mr. Heguy, while after months of closure of cafes and restaurants due to confinement in 2020, some employees have turned away from 'a sector known for its long hours, its arduousness and its low salaries.

Same satisfaction on the part of the GNI, employers' union of independent hotel and catering, whose president Didier Chenet hailed "excellent news", because "now that everyone pays by credit card or via applications, very often we do not 'has more change to add 3 to 5 euros for the service ", or the president of Medef, Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux.

Didier Chenet, president of GNI, and Roland Héguy, president of Umih, in Matignon, September 29, 2020 Bertrand GUAY AFP / Archives

For the Parisian restaurateur Stéphane Manigold, at the head of the Eclore group, "finding accommodation when you are an employee in the catering industry in the capital is a nightmare: if you have 300 or 400 euros more integrated into your remuneration, the banker, the the lessor will take this into account. This increases the debt capacity, and enhances this hitherto invisible money ".

The hotel-café-restaurant business is one of the professional branches that are currently conducting salary negotiations.

According to Nabil Azzouz, Federal Secretary FO-FGTA hotel-cafes-restaurants, this measure could "reduce (the) margin for wage negotiations in the branch", and "does not respond to the real issues which are cuts, weekends, the 13th month, wages ".

ref-boc-jri-leb / kd / spi

© 2021 AFP