hotel general manager Mr. George Robinson said yesterday.

Mr. Robinson said he was pleased the Essential Industries Disputes Settlement Board ruled there was no collective bargaining agreement in place between Grotto Bay and the BIU.

As reported in The Royal Gazette last week, the Disputes Board award released yesterday said Grotto Bay could not have acted unfairly when it moved unilaterally to raise employees' base pay and end mandatory tipping in January of 1991, because there was no contract in place for the hotel to violate.

"We determined that we would prefer to do things in a different manner from the rest of the hotels and went ahead and did so in the absence of a collective bargaining agreement,'' Mr. Robinson said.

Divorce from the BIU was "best for the future of the company, the company's employees, and our guests,'' he said.

"That's the situation that currently exists, and that's the one that we obviously are most comfortable with.'' Before moving unilaterally, hotel management tried to meet with the BIU to discuss desired changes, "but we didn't get anywhere,'' Mr. Robinson said.

Mr. Ottiwell Simmons MP, president of the BIU, said he had just returned to the Island and had not had time to study the award. He said he would make a statement today.

Despite a recommendation from the Disputes Board, Mr. Robinson said Grotto Bay would not rehire fired storeroom manager Mr. Erwin Whitter, nor fired waiter Mr. Barry Smith.

Instead, the hotel will award the two workers compensation which the board spelled out as an alternative to their rehiring, Mr. Robinson said. Each is to receive four weeks pay, plus two weeks pay for each year of service, plus a twelfth of two weeks pay for each month thereafter.

The board upheld the hotel's firing of bar porter Mr. Larry Robinson. On the broader issue of whether a contract existed, the board found that Grotto Bay had resigned from the Hotel Employers of Bermuda effective November 30, 1987 and was neither a party nor a signatory to the collective agreement consummated between the HEB and the BIU on December 14, 1988.

But in a more far-reaching finding, the 32-page award also said there was no collective bargaining agreement between the HEB as a whole and the BIU after February 24, 1991.

Mr. Alan Dunch, the lawyer who represented Grotto Bay at the hearings in July, September, and November, said the board recognised what he had argued all along.

"I believe the board makes it clear that the position even as we speak today is that there is no collective agreement currently in place between any hotel in Bermuda and the BIU,'' he said.

Mr. Dunch would not comment on whether the Grotto Bay findings might affect implementation of the recent Haughton Award, which spelled out a new contract between the HEB and the BIU extending from May 24, 1991 until February 25, 1995.

On October 3, 1991, Mr. Robinson outlined to employees the hotel's plans to raise wages but eliminate mandatory gratuities.

The BIU said the move violated the 1988 collective agreement, which it said Grotto Bay was bound by at the time. To support its position, the BIU noted the hotel generally abided by the terms of that agreement.

But the Disputes Board said an employer's decision to operate under the terms of an expired or terminated agreement did not revive or reinstate the agreement.