Going into 2015 with wages and benefits still owed to them, Hotel Tower workers are hoping that the solidarity and support received from international unions would hasten a resolution to their problem.
“It’s a little over $200,000 they have for me and I was hoping to get it for the holidays, because it would have come in good but I guess when it comes is the right time,” an employee told Stabroek News on December 31.
“I didn’t know the union write to the other international unions but I am happy. You know more people hear about our dilemma it’s the more support and the pressure will be on them to pay us, well hopefully soon,” she added.
Some 67 workers are owed a total of $5,577,633 in wages, salaries and other benefits.
In May last year, the hotel abruptly closed and workers protested for their owed salaries. The hotel subsequently said business had declined dramatically in recent times but that assets would be liquidated to pay outstanding amounts to its employees, although it subsequently broke several promises to pay them. The Ministry of Labour intervened and has since taken the hotel’s management to court to get payments for the workers.
The next court date is set for January 12.
Sherwood Clarke, President of the Clerical and Commercial Workers Union, which represents the Hotel Tower employees, told Stabroek News on Wednesday that he has written to, among other global unions, the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations (IUF) seeking solidarity.
“We have written to international bodies and affiliates calling for their solidarity in this matter. We are hoping that by doing so they will send letters and other correspondence to our government and the employer and this will speed up the process so that workers could be paid,” Clarke said.
An ex-employee said that all the owed workers are following the developments and that they have worked out a plan to take turns in going to listen to the court proceedings, whenever they are called.
The employee lamented that a new year has come and that they are still without their monies while he informed that others have not yet been able to find employment at other places.
“For some of us it is hard, real hard and not to say this or that or talk Salim [the owner’s] name but this should not have been… The hotel run down because of poor management. It’s not to say they aint use to get people but is what they do with the money… Now look who have to suffer is we not he,” the man said.
In October Canadian Michael Mosgrove announced that he was buying the hotel at a price pegged at US$8 million.
However in early December sources informed that the deal for the sale of the hotel had collapsed and workers hired by the prospective buyer were ejected from the property.
“Salim [Azeez] called off the deal because the man was all talk and no action… A day the new people get put out and Salim lock up back he place and that’s where it is at currently,” a source told Stabroek News.
Efforts to contact Mosgrove proved futile.
