The Bermuda Government’s persistent attempts to force workers to accept continued furlough days undermined its contractual obligations, according to a lawyer representing the unions.

Delroy Duncan, who represents five of the Island’s unions in a court case between the unions and the Minister of Home Affairs, said the Government “seeks to use the very same law it refuses to abide by against the respondents”.

The minister has sought an injunction from the courts to prevent what it has described as illegal industrial action, which it claims threatens efforts to improve the Island’s economy.

While lawyer Gregory Howard, representing the Minister, argued yesterday that the unions have a long history of illegal strike action, Mr Duncan responded that the unions were not the “rabble rousers” portrayed by the government.

He noted a 2013 Memorandum of Understanding between the unions and the government in which the unions voluntarily accepted pay cuts in order to assist the government’s efforts to reduce spending, adding that the unions were always willing to negotiate with government.

However, Mr Duncan argued that the government had breached its contracts by repeatedly attempting to reduce the salaries of staff and “force” the issue of furlough days, leading to three days of industrial action in January.

“We say that repeated attempts to try and reduce the salaries of the government workers was undermining the relationship of trust and confidence between government and the workers and that manifested itself in this case,” he said.

He specifically cited a January 23 letter written by Minister of Finance Bob Richards, which he described as an anticipatory breach of contract.

In the letter, he said Mr Richards requested that the unions reconsider the issue of furlough days, saying it was “imperative” that they continue and warning that if they did not, government would be forced to consider salary cuts or layoffs.

Mr Duncan said the letter “went too far” and was “worse than aggressive”. He referred to it as the “going all the way letter” which he said was the result of the Minister of Finance not getting “his way” and negotiations not resulting in what he was seeking. “As innocuous as it may seem to some, there is a legal consequence to what he did,” Mr Duncan said. “There is a contractual consequence to what he did.”

He said that the real issue at hand was not the impact of the industrial action on the economic environment in Bermuda but the impact the continuation of furlough days would have on the employees of the respondents.

Union members who heard the contents of the letter felt threatened and intimidated, according to Mr Duncan. The matters were more emotive for the unions as they had presented government with around $35 million in cost savings in earlier negotiations, while government representatives had only submitted around $5 million.

After the decision was made not to accept the continuation, he said the government’s actions became unlawful because the continued attempts to vary the contract by not taking furlough days off the table amounted to a breach of the mutual trust and confidence between employer and employee.

According to Mr Duncan, a few days later Michael Dunkley, the Premier, acknowledged that furlough days could not continue without the agreement of the respondents. Mr Duncan said that if this had been made clear from the start the situation would never have developed as it did.

He said the government can’t be allowed to break the law and then criticise the unions for reacting, adding that “the elevated height of concern is not borne out by the evidence or the events”.