Responding to the criticism from Shadow Finance Minister Grant Gibbons and Bermuda Employers' Council president William DeSilva, Jr., Bermuda Industrial Union President Derrick Burgess argued that the civil service had not had to implement extra overtime when it switched to a 35-hour week in the 1980s.

He added that service delivery could be maintained if management stagger the shifts of the workforce, saying: "People want to put a negative slant on this before it has even started."