The Hotel Hold-up
The hotel strike in London, with its paraphernalia of pickets and of strikers or their political supporters, usually the latter, who lie down in front of lorries and have to be dragged off by policemen, is as mischievous and indefensible a performance as can well be imagined. The ostensible origin of the strike was the dismissal by the Savoy Hotel management of a waiter named Piazza, who had only been at work there a matter of days. Whatever Mr. Piazza's vices or virtues the Savoy management was not alone in the view it took of him, for when his reinstatement was mooted the staff of the grill room, where he had worked, declared they would stop work themselves if he was brought back. The National Arbitration Tribunal, to which the matter was referred, did indeed recommend Piazza's reinstatement, but the hotel management contended that the tribunal had no power to enforce it, and a higher ruling has since confirmed that view. (The management paid Piazza some k17o in wages, without reinstating him, before he was actually dismissed.) From that point a confusion of negotiation, with a good deal of unwisdom on both sides, developed, and a Ministry of Labour Court of Enquiry has gone into the whole matter. Its report is expected to be published this week, and though the Court has no power to enforce its ruling its review of the whole case will at least give public opinion something to work on. Sinister aspects of the affair are the obvious attempt to make life in London's principal hotels impossible in the week of the Royal Wedding, and the evidence that exists of the activity of agitators who are far more political than industrial. The fact that only a small proportion of the staff at the Savoy, where the whole thing originated, has come out on strike is significant.
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