Great Eastern staff soften stand

The employees of the West Bengal government owned Great Eastern Hotel (GEH) today appeared to have softened their hardline position against acceptance of the voluntary retirement scheme (VRS) offered by the state government following two major developments on April 14 - the declaration of the Bengal tourism minister Dinesh Dakua that the hotel would be shut down anyway, and the CITU recommendation to GEH employees to accept the government offer.

The employees and CITU would like at least a month more to accept the offer, which is scheduled to close next week, but the West Bengal tourism minister said a decision on the extension request would take some time.

"If salaries are not going to be paid, and the hotel is going to be shut, accepting the offer does appear to be a better proposition", said a hotel employee at the front office which was the only hotel facility open today.

The minister said on Thursday that the government would stop operating the hotel from next month and not pay salaries and the decision to do so had been announced by the state government in the Bengal Assembly by the chief minister.

The hardening of the government stand followed the recommendation made by the Left trade union Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) to GEH employees to accept the government offer and quit the hotel.

GEH has another trade union backed by the Trinamul Congress under the chairmanship of Kolkata's Mayor Subrata Mukherjee, but this union has followed a much softer position towards the government offer till date, while CITU had all along held the hardline position.

The government's initial separation offer to 422-odd GEH employees, funded by the UK agency DFID, closed on March 31 without any acceptance.

It was extended and offered outside the hotel premises to prevent trade union leaders from intimidating willing staff, said government sources, but even then less that 20 had accepted it till Thursday afternoon.

The government had called for bids for privatisation of the hotel and bidders included ITC's hotels group, the Park chain of hotels and several Indian groups with foreign partners.

With restaurant and banquet facilities shut, GEH today wore a deserted look.

Employees said the traditional Bengali New Year's Day (Nobo Borsho) celebrations had no place in the current situation and therefore were not organised this year.

Yesterday, some employees had formed a human chain in front of GEH to protest both the government move to separate all employees and sell the loss-making hotel to a private operator as well as Citu's turnaround.

"Our leaders are getting themselves elected to the CPIM central committee at our cost", one of the employees in the human chain had alleged yesterday.

The employees said they opposed the sale on two grounds.

First, they disagreed that the hotel was unviable because it had rented out more than 30,000 square feet of prime real estate to showrooms, shops and outlets at Rs 2-9 per sq.ft. when the going rate in the area was Rs 55-100/sq.ft..

Secondly, employees said the GEH management had failed to collect unpaid bills in excess of Rs 10 crore, due mostly from government of West Bengal departments, which could have helped it survive.