Union Criticises No-Tipping Advice

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31111, 14 July 1966, Page 6

Union Criticises No-Tipping Advice

The instructions to tourists not to tip while staying at hotels in New Zealand being sent out by the South Island Publicity Association were strongly resented by the Canterbury Hotel Workers’ Union, said its secretary (Mr L. Short) yesterday.

The “no tip" Instructions, he said, were being sent out by the association in a brochure.

“We are opposed to tips as pert of wages, but we think that a tip tot extra services given is entirely over to the individual," said Mr Short “If the tourist asks for something special, the tourist is quite entitled to do so." The union’s view was “Why try to cut the worker out of the edd two-bob he may get for some extra service?” “Indications are that tourism will be a major industry earning many millions of pounds of overseas currency,” he said. “Everyone wants to “claw off* at it, but the worker is not allowed to pick up a little crumb.” Mr Short said that, due to publicity, tipping had already decreased in major hotels in the last two years. As a result really wellqualified. experienced stewards were leaving the hotel industry to look for higher earnings elsewhere.

The stewards, he said, were leaving Tourist Corporation Hotels as well as others. Mr Short Mid that the hotel industry was trying to get staff to come to New Zealand from Australia, a country which had tipping. “The overseas boys will make sure they get tips—-er you won’t get service such as you get overseas,” said Mr Short.

Grooming by Vacuum.—The coal-black horses which carry troops of the Household Cavalry when they provide an escort for the Queen on State ceremonial occasions may soon be groomed by vacuum cleaner, if an experiment proves successfid. At Wellington Barracks, where the Household Cavalry has 230 horses, Regimental Corporal Major J. W. Greaves-said: “It takes a man half an hour to use the vacuum cleaner to groom a horse. To reach the same standard of grooming it would take him three hours by hand.”—(Reuter.)