
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, April 12, 1990                   TAG: 9004120207
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: C5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: GEORGE KEGLEY BUSINESS EDITOR
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

HOTEL'S EX-WORKERS GET $200,000-PLUS IN PAY SETTLEMENT

Norfolk Southern has mailed a total of more than $200,000 in back pay or severance checks to 44 former employees of Hotel Roanoke who were not recalled to work or were recalled late after a 1984 strike.

The former hotel workers are getting checks ranging from $3,000 to $13,000, depending on their length of service, according to officials of Local 32, Food and Beverage Workers Union. The railroad company owned the hotel but has since given it to Virginia Tech.

"We were very satisfied; everybody got something," said James H. Wade, a spokesman for the union in Roanoke.

The settlement, approved by the National Labor Relations Board on March 28, came after three months of hard bargaining with Doreen Hamilton Fishwick, former hotel manager, and lawyers for both sides, said Minor Christian of Washington, local union president.

The union had been fighting the case with the labor board until both sides decided to negotiate, Christian said.

The negotiations followed an order by a three-member NLRB panel a year ago, upholding an NLRB judge's ruling that the hotel failed to rehire and give back pay to more than 40 employees after the six-month strike. That order required either enforcement by the NLRB or compliance or a request for review by the hotel.

Christian said the labor board approved the process of "voluntary compliance through collective bargaining."

Back pay and severance pay will go to 28 employees and the remainder will receive only back pay, said Don Piedmont, NS public relations director.

The addresses of four of the former employees are unknown and the railroad company is asking the union to help find them, Piedmont said. Also, a payment will go to the estate of one former employee who has died.

Severance payments were calculated on the basis of five days' pay for each year of service, Christian said. Many of the employees were longtime workers at the hotel.

The question was not of settlement "but of what's fair for all workers," he said.

Many of the former employees did not have good records and some had moved on to other jobs, Christian said.

Tom Kircher, a union lawyer, said last year that many workers were not recalled as provided by the union settlement, some came back at lower pay or without proper benefits and some were given only 24 hours of work a week while strike replacements worked full time.

by CNB