Despite the ample rhetoric that has appeared over the last 25 years regarding sustainable development and tourism, the issue of equity and social justice as a key component of this concept has been largely ignored, argue Dimitri Ioannides and Evangelia Petridou in the recently published book "Tourism Enterprises and the Sustainability Agenda Across Europe." CHAR(13) + CHAR(10)

 In the chapter Tourism workers and the equity dimension of sustainability they further discuss that most commentators brush aside aspects relating to tourism workers, their working conditions and their overall quality of life preferring, instead, to focus on the need to balance a community economic growth objectives with environmental conservation. Much of the chapter focuses on salient policy-making events and initiatives relating to sustainability in tourism labour specifically in Europe. This is followed by a discussion on the status of tourism jobs, with particular attention to the extreme inequities arising from the noticeable division of labour characterizing the sector.