Stork Stuck?

Night spot rendezvous of debutantes, collegians, actresses, writers, celebrities, exhibitionists, setting for many a devastating crack, many a feeble, alcoholic punch, is Manhattan's famed Stork Club. Two and a half years ago it became the setting for a labor brawl. Smooth, drawling Manager Sherman Billingsley fired nine waiters because, said he, they were incompetent. Incompetence included: garlic breaths, manicuring their nails in the restaurant, ordering drinks for customers, then drinking them themselves, getting cozy with patrons, not keeping tables clean.

The waiters indignantly denied every impeachment but the last. If they were guilty of "keeping dirty tables" it was only on the order of Mr. Billingsley, who, they said, instructed them not to "bother about changing the linen on the table . . . when you are serving parties that do not pay, because they cannot kick if they do not pay." Real reason for their being fired, they said, was for trying to join a union. (Several of them, said Mr. Billingsley, did not try to join a union till the day they were fired.)

The Hotel and Restaurant Employes' International Alliance took the case to the State Labor Relations Board, which finally sided with the waiters. In such a ritzy place as the Stork Club, the help could never have been guilty of such conduct, the Board felt. The waiters must be reinstated and their back pay (an estimated $50 a week with tips) restored.

While back pay for the waiters mounted to $20,000, Mr. Billingsley appealed to the State Supreme Court. As one of the first State Board rulings to reach New York courts, the case assumed testy proportions. The court upheld the Board.

Mr. Billingsley, protesting that he might as well close up the Stork Club as try to pay, took the case on up to the Appellate Division. There he got the decision reversed. Thereupon the Board appealed the reversal to the Court of Appeals. And last week, while back pay piled up faster than a check in Mr. Billingsley's club, the highest court in the State cracked down on Mr. Billingsley's hopes. It upheld the original findings. Mr. Billingsley would indeed have to take his men back, cough up. The tot to date: $57,600.

Grimly Mr. Billingsley, his blood and the penalties both now very high, announced he would take the case to the U. S. Supreme Court.

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