By Athena Karsera
THE MINISTERS of Labour and Tourism yesterday announced that efforts to end a strike at two Larnaca hotels would soon be under way.
Workers at the Golden Bay and Lordos Beach hotels are striking for the reinstatement of colleagues sacked to make way for outside contractors.
The increasingly bitter two-week dispute has seen pickets blocking the hotel entrances and management threatening court action to have them removed.
Yesterday a rubbish collection vehicle failed to breach the picket line at the Lordos Beach. Management said strikers had stopped the truck, while unions said the garbage collectors had refused to pass through in a show of solidarity with the pickets.
On Wednesday Lordos Holdings, the company which owns the hotels, obtained a court order threatening strikers with arrest if they continued to block entrances to the hotels.
Labour Minister Andreas Moushiouttas yesterday admitted it was the first time he had heard of such action being taken in an attempt to combat strike action.
“I respect the Court’s decisions, whether I like them or not,” he said.
Moushiouttas said his Ministry’s role would not be one of mediation, but an attempt to end the deadlock and begin dialogue between strikers and management.
Tourism Minister Nicos Rolandis confirmed that both he and Moushiouttas would intervene in the dispute.
Speaking on state radio yesterday, Sek’s secretary-general, Michalakis Ioannou, said the unions had been surprised by the company’s action and predicted it would only cause bitterness.
He said that the taking out of a court order preventing workers from blocking the entrances of the two hotels “worries us, not so much because the order was issued but because of the management’s mentality.”
Ioannou said that if the action was illegal, then Lordos Holdings did not need a court order to take action against them.
“What has been changed by the court order? It just makes the situation more bitter,” he said, adding: “We are not worried about the order. It has not yet been served to those that were cited, with a few exceptions, so that we can study it in depth and take further measures.”
Also speaking on CyBC, Peo secretary-general Avraam Antoniou said the action taken by the company would not be effective, adding that the matter would be discussed with the union’s legal advisors.
“The solution to every labour problem is for dialogue to begin as soon as possible and for dialogue to continue whether there is calm, whether there is strike action or whether there are incidents of other kinds,” he said.
In a statement issued yesterday, Peo called management to the negotiating table. The statement said no court order or police intervention would stop workers from continuing with the strike. Peo also called on all workers to give their support to the hotel employees’ struggle.
Defending his company’s decision, Constantinos Lordos said yesterday: “The unions forced us to take this action.”
Lordos said that while the company respected the workers’ right to demonstrate against the dismissals of 73 of their colleagues, their abuse of this right had been very damaging.
Lordos said pickets had caused “huge problems at the entrances and exits,” of the hotels.
He claimed pickets had “shredded the tires of three cars, and scratched cars belonging to fellow staff and customers.”
Lordos said damage had also been caused to the company, as strikers made normal operations impossible; thousands of pounds had been spent on private security guards to keep the peace at the hotels, he added.
He said workers had the right to demonstrate “outside the hotel, on the pavement, wherever else,” in a calm fashion, but that those blocking the entrances would be arrested.
Management insists the dismissals at the heart of the dispute were necessary in order to combat millions of pounds worth of losses.
