Moushiouttas working on new strategy to end hotel deadlock

LABOUR Minister Andreas Moushiouttas said yesterday he would soon be proposing an alternative approach to solving the ongoing dispute at Larnaca’s Lordos hotels.

Speaking on CyBC radio, Moushiouttas did not say what the new approach would entail, but said he hoped it would bring new developments “within the next two to three days.”

The minister also said he had not yet informed unions Sek and Peo or the two hotels’ controlling company, Lordos Holdings, about his new suggestion. He said that until the new position was adopted, the official government stance would remain a solution through binding arbitration.

Unions have so far refused to take part in binding arbitration unless the 53 dismissed workers at the centre of the dispute are rehired — something which Lordos Holdings is not prepared to accept.

The employees were dismissed from the Lordos Beach and Golden Bay hotels when sections of the hotels were turned over to outside contractors in an effort to lower costs.

The dismissals prompted strike action which has now entered into its forth month. Sympathy strikes have also been called, the most recent affecting the vast majority of the island’s hotels for six hours last Thursday, and the island’s ports and airports for two hours on Monday.

Tourism Minister Nicos Rolandis said yesterday he was concerned the crisis would cause the island’s “traditional customers, which we fought to get, to turn to other markets in the Eastern Mediterranean, such as Egypt, Turkey, Jordan, Israel and even the occupied areas.”