in hearings on the hotels contract dispute.

The board yesterday agreed to delay the start of proceedings until April 27, giving the Hotel Employers of Bermuda time to take their case against Mr.

Michael Mello to the Supreme Court.

The HEB had threatened not to participate in the hearings if the delay was not granted.

That would have left the second-ever hearings of the Essential Industries Disputes Settlement Board in the same situation as the first earlier this year, when Grotto Bay Hotel managers refused to take part.

Bermuda Industrial Union president Mr. Ottiwell Simmons yesterday protested the delay, telling board members they had been properly appointed and should get on with their business of deciding a contract dispute.

The old contract expired in February last year. In appointing the board, Government asked it to determine what issues have already been agreed upon between the two parties, and then examine and make recommendations on the outstanding items.

The board is made up of chairman Prof. Ronald Haughton, Canon James Francis and Mr. Mello, a well-known lawyer and familiar figure on Government arbitration panels.

The HEB first asked Mr. Mello to withdraw in an April 6 letter and, when he failed to do so, filed writs in the Supreme Court against him and the Minister of Labour. No hearing date has been set yet.

Yesterday, Mr. Mello gave copies of the writ against him, and related correspondence, to the settlement board.

In them, the HEB complains of "likelihood of bias'' as a result of Mr.

Mello's involvement in an earlier attempt to settle the contract dispute by arbitrator Mr. William Hobgood.

The "Hobgood Award'' in May last year was rejected by the BIU but imposed unilaterally by the HEB. In July, the HEB claims, Mr. Mello came to the hoteliers and urged them to go back to the negotiating table to work things out in the interest of the country.

Mr. Mello urged the hoteliers to abandon their decision to impose the Hobgood Award and presumably expected them to offer the BIU more, the HEB says.

This makes it likely Mr. Mello will be biased against their position in the settlement board hearings, the HEB argues -- especially because it plans to argue that the Hobgood Award was overly generous to the BIU.

A lot of valuable time would be wasted if the hearings went forward with Mr.

Mello on the panel, only to be subsequently quashed by a Supreme Court decision, the HEB said.

In the end, the settlement board agreed to a delay, but only after strenuous objections from Mr. Simmons. The BIU leader argued that the board had been properly appointed, and had a duty to start its hearing into the dispute.

The BIU has objections to the HEB's American labour negotiations lawyer Mr.

Stephen Shawe, Mr. Simmons pointed out. What would happen if the union decided to object to his participation when hearings resume on April 27, he asked.

"What are you going to do? Delay it again?''