accounting fees if it joins other hotels in ratifying the Haughton award for a new hotel workers contract.

That is the estimate of hotel industry sources who are waiting for the 300-room hotel to join ranks in the critical contract.

Elbow has labelled the award "lunacy'' and withheld commitment until it has assessed the costs.

Signing the Haughton award would also see the hotel forfeit concessions it secured in an independent deal with its workers on February 25, 1991. They include removal of standard labour guarantees such as 39 weeks of work for employees and 100 percent staffing when the hotel is 70 percent full or more.

An Elbow decision to go it alone for an independent contract would be considered a serious challenge to the Bermuda Industrial Union and the Hotel Employers of Bermuda, most of whose members have agreed to the Haughton contract.

"It would be serious for the union,'' one senior Government source said. "It would have to pull out all the stops and take some chances to prevent it.'' The Haughton award, which was written by the Essential Industries Disputes Settlement Board, singled out Elbow for its unilateral actions during nearly two years it took to reach the settlement.

In a special five-page section at the end of 31-page report, American Professor Ronald Haughton ruled that "Elbow Beach must conform'' to the provisions of his deal.

He cited the hotel's move to cut its own deal with workers on February 25, 1991, the day after the expiry of the previous contract.

He also noted its rejection of an HEB-BIU decision three months later to implement the five-percent, first-year wage proposal in the ill-fated award by American mediator Mr. William Hobgood.

"Elbow Beach was one of four hotels which originally agreed to be bound by the Hobgood Award,'' he said. "While these hotels and the rest of the HEB member hotels accepted and implemented the five-percent first-year wage increase... Elbow Beach did not.'' Elbow's deal sought to cover the five percent Hobgood increase through gratuity hikes. It was a move Prof. Haughton deemed risky.

"When Elbow Beach did not implement the Hobgood first-year wage increases as did the other hotels, it knowingly acted at its peril.'' He concluded that Elbow's arrangement did not cover standard compensations for overtime, sick leave, vacations and public holidays.

The hotel "could not assume that no increase in wage rates and an increase in gratuities -- the latter having no cost to the hotel -- would take care of everything''.

As a result, the professor required Elbow to change its employee records to show their wage rates went up five percent.

In a ruling that hotel spokesman Mr. John Jefferis labelled a "judgement of Solomon'', Elbow must also show the corresponding amounts paid to workers for "overtime, sick leave, compensable leaves of absence, vacations, severance, lay-offs, paid weeks, rest days and public holidays...''