yesterday.

Sen. Alex Scott, PLP spokesman for Labour and Immigration, said he was troubled that certain local hotel properties had seen fit to break away from the Bermuda Industrial Union and that others were being encouraged to follow suit.

He said he wanted to draw Parliament's attention to the fact that organised labour was an "important tradition'' and there would be a significant impact on the community if it was removed.

He said letters of complaint he was receiving from workers were beginning to reflect the difficulties being experienced by employees at some hotels because of a lack of representation.

A prime example of one of those letters was one from an employee of Grotto Bay Hotel claiming Bermudians were being replaced by contract workers and a foreign worker had called his colleagues "niggers''.

Since the workers could not go to a labour union for help, Sen. Scott said he had no choice but to raise their complaints in the Senate.

Sen. Scott said he had heard reports of workers being fired because they did not fit in with the intended image of the hotel for which they worked. And he had received complaints of racial slurs and Bermudians losing out to non-Bermudian job applicants.

"All this is happening at a time when Bermudians are hard-pressed by the ravages of recession,'' he said. "It may be that management has very legitimate reasons for making these shifts and redundancies, but they seem somewhat flippant and the workers have no union and no voice. To whom must they address these problems? Parliament has no choice but to become their voice.'' Government Secretary for Labour and Immigration Sen. Maxwell Burgess said he believed most workers knew they could take up such problems with the Department of Labour and Immigration.

He agreed the hotel industry was going through big changes, but pointed out one change it was not yet seeing was "profitability''.

But Sen. Norma Astwood (Ind) said it would be "naive'' to think most workers knew or would even be comfortable about going to the Department of Labour and Immigration with their complaints.

She said it was important not to ignore information that came through "acceptable and appropriate channels'' -- such as the Senate.

"Don't think a mere letter to Immigration will resolve the issue, because it won't,'' she said, adding six women had come to her for help recently after their employer had gone out of business.

Sen. Astwood said decisions by such hotels as Pink Beach and Grotto Bay to break ties with the union had left a large number of workers feeling insecure in their jobs and well-being.

She said Government needed to undertake an overall review of the situation before it worsened.

Government leader in the Senate the Hon. Mike Winfield , a manager in the hotel industry, said he understood the predicament hoteliers were in.

He said hotels in Bermuda were continuing to lose money, but needed to maintain "top level'' service to remain successful.

"There must be an end to refusals to understand, to ultimatums and to confrontations from both sides,'' he said. "A genuine understanding of the business is needed.'' Sen. Winfield said he thought it was wrong for senators to bring individual examples of worker problems to the floor of the Senate.

He said senators should rather take the complaints to the appropriate officials. Senators had a responsibility to represent the people, not to make trouble.

Sen. Jerome Dill (UBP) recalled that when he was the subject of a racial slur last year the Opposition had remained silent.

But now that an allegation had surfaced that a non-Bermudian worker had called his fellow workers "niggers', the Opposition was in an uproar.

Sen. Dill was referring to a poster with his and a Government MP's photograph above the words, "Master's got a New Nigger''.

"I did not hear a single squeak from that side of the table at the time,'' he said. "The Opposition spoke of freedom of speech, I recall.''