rights? Certainly.

Disrupt full hotels after losing three inquiries into the same tips grievance? No.

If there were no machinery for the Bermuda Industrial Union to be heard, then a strike might be their only recourse. But there is an Essential Industries Disputes Board, chaired by independent outsiders, and it has heard the BIU three times. That would seem to be more than reasonable. It may be that the Minister responsible for labour, the. Hon. John Irving Pearman, demeaned the disputes board process by leaning over backward and sending the tips issue to the board three times.

It may be time now for Bermudians to decide if they want the Country's economy held to ransom by the Bermuda Industral Union. There is more at stake here than the aims of the union and more than the union's duty to its members.

There was not very much public discussion before the current strike largely, we think, because people felt the BIU would not or could not pull off a strike at this time.

In the past, strikes have followed a certain formula in Bermuda. They have been something of a BIU blow out, followed by a hangover but not by a dangerous illness. This time the situation is different. The blowout may be followed by a lingering terminal illness.

It seems to us that organisations and individual Bermudians have a responsibility toward the welfare of the Country and the welfare of individual Bermudians. It is difficult to believe that a strike during a US holiday weekend and at the beginning of a tourist season which is Bermuda's first chance to recover from the recession, is in anyone's best interest. There can be no doubt in anyone's mind that a hotel strike at this time is a very extreme measure.

It must also be remembered that this Government has been in power for a very long time and the Country has been promised solutions to the labour problems regularly since the Bermuda Electric Light Company labour riots in February of 1965 without results. If we thought this hotels strike would achieve anything constructive for hotel workers, then we could see the BIU's reasoning. But all logic suggests that the strike can only lead to a loss of hotel jobs at a time when hotel workers have a chance to recover from some lean years. It may well be that several large hotels are in serious danger of closing. Any strike in the hotels has a fallout which is impossible to calculate and which can turn a potentially good tourist year into a bad year.

Two large hotels are closed. Other hotels have serious financial problems.

There is every reason to believe that Mr. Bill Marriott and Mr. Paul Sonnabend will not go on operating hotels in the face of labour disruption when those hotels are already losing money. Would you? The hotels have just asked for millions of dollars in Bermuda Government tax relief. As far as we know, they have not received much relief, probably because Government fears a voter response to tax cuts for hotels. Now the hotels are faced with a strike by Bermuda's workers. Would you continue to do business in Bermuda?