workers' tips prompted a hotel official to appeal: "Enough is enough.'' Hotel Employers of Bermuda executive vice president Mr. John Harvey worried yesterday that the Bermuda Industrial Union was stirring up trouble just as the high season was approaching.

Hoteliers did not owe workers any outstanding gratuity payments and a Government board had backed their position, Mr. Harvey said.

Bermuda Industrial Union members plan to take a 1,000-signature petition to HEB offices this afternoon demanding payment of tips they have accused the hotels of pocketing.

"We hope to let the employers know the seriousness of their naughty ways,'' BIU president Mr. Ottiwell Simmons MP said yesterday. "They just can't take the people's money.'' But Mr. Harvey asked, "What's the sense of having a board of inquiry if the union is going to go on and on if things do no turn out their way?'' Mr. Simmons said it would be decided at a 3 p.m. meeting today who would take the petition to the HEB, located on the corner of Reid and King Streets.

"It is not a march,'' Mr. Simmons stressed. "We are walking from the BIU to the HEB to take them the petition.'' Mr. Harvey said the exercise was a vehicle that BIU officials were using to "rip-up labour relations''.

"It is self-driven and propelled by union officials,'' he said. "The BIU needs emotive issues for its upcoming labour conference.'' He added: "The union is irresponsibly causing harm to the hotel industry just when the season is coming upon us.'' Mr. Harvey said the HEB had agreed to go before a Government board to decide a number of outstanding hotel worker contract issues, including the alleged unpaid gratuities.

"The union was not satisfied with the Haughton award and the Ministry of Labour and Home Affairs caused it to sit again. And in August 1993, the board again ruled what it had before, that the hotel workers were not owed any gratuity payments.'' Mr. Harvey said he believed the money the union was after involved an increased hotel service charge.

The Haughton award had allowed hotels to increase their service charges, which are shared among workers, to defray operating costs, including wage increases, Mr. Harvey said.

The award said hotels could keep the difference of any increase, Mr. Harvey said.

"It's those monies I suspect the union is concerned about,'' he said.