The Bermuda Industrial Union has failed to pay out benefits to longtime members of the hotels division who have recently become disabled, it was claimed yesterday.

One woman is in need of an expensive wheelchair. But in spite of repeated efforts on her behalf, she has not yet received any benefits from the superannuation fund, a relative said.

In the last financial year, the BIU collected $43,613 in contributions to the superannuation fund and paid out $8,545 to members, according to audited financial reports obtained by The Royal Gazette .

Mrs. Frances James, who worked in housekeeping at Sonesta Beach Hotel for almost 30 years and was a union member for all that time, was in the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital's extended care unit and needed a $1,200 wheelchair, her sister Mrs. Lucille Wilson said yesterday.

However, her attempts to get the cash to which Mrs. James was entitled from the union fund for incapacitated workers had failed.

"We put in for incapacitation pay a few months ago. Molly (Burgess) just says she's working on it or she'll see about it,'' said Mrs. James, a seamstress at Sonesta. "I spoke to her again last week and she said she had not had a meeting yet and she'd get back to me.'' The fund entitles BIU members to payments of $50 a month for a maximum of ten consecutive years (up to $6,000) or a $2,000 lump sum.

A former union member, who did not want to be named, said he knew of at least six other incapacitated hotel workers who had been unable to get their benefits.

One case he was aware of involved a disabled housekeeping employee who had been a BIU member for 30-odd years but had not received a penny out of the superannuation fund despite her weekly $7 contributions.

He claimed the shop steward and other BIU members were aware of the woman's plight but had not written to her asking if she wanted her entitlements.

"They just forget about you,'' he said.

Her family may seek them on her behalf, he said.

BIU president Mr. Ottiwell Simmons had no comment on the case, referring inquiries to general secretary Mrs. Molly Burgess, who could not be reached.

The BIU's audited financial reports for the year ending September 1993 showed the union's liability to its various funds had grown to more than $7 million and that it was basically broke because nearly all its assets were in land.

The reports further showed the BIU had just $308,154 in the bank at the end September 1993. And its officers' salaries, $826,918, plus "other expenses,'' $882,385, accounted for the biggest chunk of expenditure.

And while it took in more than a million dollars in member contributions to its funds, it paid out less than $25,000 in benefits.

Benefits also include sick, strike, education upgrading and unemployment pay.

It was learned last week that Sonesta Beach Hotel workers being laid off this winter will not be getting unemployment pay because BIU funds were low. A hotel management source said the BIU's financial reports showed benefits paid out to members were "basically zero'' when compared to its income.

It is understood a change in the BIU's constitution several years ago, which was okayed by Government, allowed it to consolidate its funds Previous financial statements showed the BIU started by borrowing from the Construction (Sick and Welfare) Fund, for which it sent separate financial reports to the Registrar General up until 1980 when it stopped sending the information. At that time it had not paid back the money owed.

Although the Trade Union Act of 1965 requires the BIU to declare its fund expenditures separately to the Registrar General, it does not govern the securing of the statutory benefits of being a union member.

Labour Minister the Hon. J. Irving Pearman said that as long as the BIU complied with what its constitution said, the way it managed its funds was "not an issue for Government intervention.'' And he had not received any complaints from BIU members.

"If their constitution, or amended constitution, says they don't have to give benefits then they don't have to,'' he said.