Hospitality & Restaurant Labor Attorney (UTHGRA)

If you work at a bar, restaurant, hotel, or catering service and you aren't paid the 12% service premium, your category doesn't match your actual duties, or your tips get treated as a substitute for other premiums, you have a concrete claim under CBA 389/04 (UTHGRA).

1. CBA 389/04: what it covers and what it adds to your pay

Collective Bargaining Agreement N° 389/04, signed between the Unión de Trabajadores del Turismo, Hoteleros y Gastronómicos de la República Argentina (UTHGRA) and the Federación Empresaria Hotelera Gastronómica de la República Argentina (FEHGRA), covers the whole country — except the province of Tucumán — for staff at hotels, restaurants, bars, cafés, catering companies, and hospitality establishments. If you work in the sector, your pay stub should reflect these items:

• 12% service premium: a premium on the collective-bargaining base salary, non-absorbable and remunerative — it counts toward the 13th-month bonus and severance — paid regardless of any tips you receive (Art. 11.6, CBA 389/04).
• Seniority premium: a progressive scale on the base salary, from 1% at one year up to 14% from 19 years of seniority onward (Art. 11.3.1).
• Category by professional level: the agreement classifies jobs into 7 levels, from Level 1 (kitchen helper, bellboy, service porter) to Level 7 (brigade chief, head maître, front-desk manager), including kitchen assistant, waiter, cashier, cook, housekeeper, concierge, or receptionist, among others (Art. 9-10). Each level has its own pay scale.
• Establishment category: the salary for each level also depends on the establishment's category — hotels rated 1 to 5 stars, restaurants rated D to A — grouped into 5 scales (Art. 11.1). The same job can pay differently depending on the establishment's category.
• Extra staff for events: anyone called in as extra staff is owed a 30% premium on their category's base salary (Art. 7.6.2).
• Holidays and weekends: work on Saturdays after 1 p.m., Sundays, and holidays is paid at the ordinary rate plus a compensatory day off; if you're called in to work a holiday, a 100% surcharge is also owed (Art. 8.5).
• Weekly rest and rest between shifts: the industry allows fixed shifts, rotating shifts, or alternating schedules, but requires a minimum 12-hour rest between shifts and a 35-hour continuous weekly rest period (Art. 8).
• Meals: in principle non-remunerative, except for the cases the agreement itself exempts (Art. 11.4); it cannot be used to reduce what you're owed in cash.

Tips are a separate chapter: spontaneous, voluntary tips left by customers don't count toward the collective-bargaining salary or the base for the 13th-month bonus or severance, but that doesn't authorize the employer to skip the service premium or the other premiums under the agreement.

2. The most common claims in Hospitality and Restaurants

These are the claims we see most often from workers in the sector, with their legal basis:

• Service premium unpaid or confused with tips, when CBA 389/04 requires it to appear as a separate, remunerative line item on the pay stub (Art. 11.6).
• Incorrect job classification: paying the wage of a lower level than actually matches the duties performed, or ignoring the establishment's scale (Art. 9, 10 and 11.1).
• Unrecognized overtime on rotating shifts or events, without the surcharge under Article 201 of the Employment Contract Law nor the 100% for a holiday worked (Art. 8.5, CBA 389/04).
• Seniority premium not updated as the scale's brackets are reached (Art. 11.3.1).
• Weekly rest or rest between shifts not respected, common in poorly scheduled rotating-shift systems (Art. 8).
• Miscalculated severance: Article 245, as rewritten by Law 27.802 (BO 3/6/2026), is based on the best normal and habitual monthly pay over the last year, excluding the 13th-month bonus, vacation pay, and non-monthly bonuses, but including remunerative premiums earned in at least 6 of those months, such as the service premium. If the employer calculated your severance on the base salary alone, without the 12%, the severance is understated.

3. How we handle the claim, step by step

1. Free audit of your recent pay stubs, to check whether the service premium, category, and seniority are correctly paid under CBA 389/04.
2. Calculation of the difference between what you were paid and what's owed by professional level, establishment category, and seniority.
3. Formal demand by free labor telegram, detailing the premiums owed and the correct classification.
4. Mandatory SECLO conciliation or a direct lawsuit, depending on the type of claim.
5. Court claim before the National Labor Courts if there's no settlement, on a 100% contingency fee basis.

4. Common mistakes when claiming in Hospitality and Restaurants

• Accepting that the 12% service premium is "already included" in tips, when they are two separate, independent items.
• Signing your final settlement without checking your category, professional level, and the establishment's scale.
• Letting the two-year deadline under Article 256 pass on monthly wage differences, which lapse month by month.
• Claiming only the base collective-bargaining salary without adding the service premium and seniority to the Article 245 base when calculating severance.

Frequently Asked Questions about Hospitality and Restaurants (CBA 389/04)