Angry hotel staff hit road

Staff Reporter NEARLY 300 vehicles set out in defiant procession from Calvia yesterday morning aiming for the offices of the Balearic government in Palma. The massed gathering, jamming the routes into Palma, represented more than 100 workers from the Hotel Galatzó who have been forced to claim unemployment benefit for 15 months following the closure of the establishment for refurbishment work in November, 2002. The object of the journey from Calvia to government offices at Consolat de Mar in Palma, was to get local authority backing to force the hotel owners to re-open. The government had already announced on Monday that they will meet with the hotel workers' Union representatives on 4 March in order to find a solution to the conflict. Ongoing protest, however, will mean that yesterday's cavalcade will not be the only one to grace the early morning roads to Palma. At 9am every morning, workers will band together their “caravan” of cars which will leave from the Hotel Galatzó to make the pilgrimage to the Consolat. There they will remain as a massed gathering until 1pm every working day until 14 March next, the date of the next general elections. Antonio Villalón, a Workers Commission representative from the Hostelry Federation, explained that these pressure tactics were approved on Monday in an Assembly held by the more than 100 workers who had both permanent and temporary contracts with the management of the Hotel Galatzó. The workers were forced to claim unemployment benefit from November, 2002, and according to Villalón's condemnations, many of them who had unsecured contracts are now not able to claim any kind of benefit at all.