By Athena Karsera
PICKETS outside two Larnaca hotels were yesterday served with a summons to appear in Court for blocking the entrances to the Golden Bay and Lordos Beach hotels.
Unions meanwhile threatened that strike action would spread across the island from next week.
An appeal from Labour Minister Andreas Moushiouttas to the unions to call off their plan to escalate the dispute fell on deaf ears.
Moushiouttas said that he had received a letter from Lordos Holdings, the owner of the two hotels, stating that management was ready to open negotiations.
He said he expected to meet Lordos representatives before the end of the day.
The summonses came after management on Thursday took out court orders prohibiting strikers from blocking the entrances to the two hotels, following almost two weeks of increasingly bitter picketing.
The strike has been going on for over two weeks, in protest at management’s decision to lay off 73 staff in an effort to cut costs.
Fifty-eight of the 158 pickets, 29 at each hotel, were issued with the summons, in spite of union claims that strikers had respected the court orders.
Peo’s representative on hotels, Andreas Trahanas, yesterday told the Cyprus Mail that the unions had appointed deputy Tassos Papadopoulos’ law office to represent their members when the first case comes before Larnaca Court on Monday.
He said there would be meetings at all the island’s hotels, followed by a two-hour strike at all Larnaca hotels some time next week.
Yesterday’s union meeting also decided to set up a strike fund to support the pickets.
Sek and Peo have each contributed £3,000 to the fund, while union- affiliated hotel staff will contribute £5 of their salary to the fund.
Trahanas warned that strike action would be extended to other areas of the island, eventually leading to a national strike if management did not give way.
The manager of Hoteliers’ Association Pasyxe, Zacharias Ioannides, yesterday condemned the union’s decision to escalate the strike.
“We want to believe that the unions will act responsibly” and take into account government attempts to start dialogue, Ioannides said.
He said such action would only damage the workers themselves, as well as the tourism industry on which they rely: “we are destroying ourselves,” he warned.
Ioannides said the industry’s overseas associates had already received negative feedback because of the strike.
Ioannides’ main argument, however, was that workers should not damage the business of hoteliers with whom they had no dispute: “There are no problems with other employers,” he said.
He said a nationwide strike would be a serious blow, with knock-on effects on the country’s economy.
