Mystery Easter egg incident at strike hotel

By Athena Karsera

LARNACA police have confirmed that a working hotel employee has officially reported one of her picketing colleagues for allegedly throwing an egg at her car on Thursday.

The unions yesterday either denied knowledge of the incident or said the accusation was false.

Employees at the Golden Bay and Lordos Beach hotels have been on strike for more than two months in protest at the dismissal of 73 of their colleagues when a number of jobs at the hotels were contracted out.

Peo’s Andreas Trahanas told the Cyprus Mail that the woman implicated in the charge “was not even striking” at the time of the reported incident. He said that the woman had already told police she was at home at the time.

The strikers and unions “did not want to have anything to do with such accusations,” Trahanas said.

He denied management reports that pickets had baskets of eggs ready to pelt strike-breakers with.

Sek’s general-secretary on hotels Nicos Epestithiou said that he had not heard about the specific incident. “False accusations are often made,” he said.

Pickets at the Golden Bay hotel last week threw a tomato at an unsuspecting American tourist.

Trahanas also said yesterday that the strikers and unions had decided to celebrate Easter outside the two Larnaca hotels.

Constantinos Lordos, the Director of Lordos Holdings, which controls the two hotels, has said that the company “is not willing to negotiate our rights”, and that a business is entitled to arrange employment in order not to lose money. The dismissals had been necessary to combat chronic losses at the hotels, he said.