The president-elect of the Bermuda Public Services Association has denied the union is on a collision course with Government over plans to bring in performance-based pay.

Nigel Pemberton, who officially takes over from Betty Christopher in April, said the 3,100-strong union would take a lot of convincing on the issue and he called on Government to come up with a blueprint for the civil service.

Finance Minister Eugene Cox said in Friday's Budget statement that a review over performance linked pay had started and changes will be phased in this year and next as Government tries to make pay more competitive with the private sector.

However, performance based pay (PBP) sparked a strike threat at the Bermuda Housing Corporation before management temporarily dropped the idea this month.

Mr. Pemberton said similar plans had failed in the UK because they had divided workers.

He said: "It took us back into the dark age, before unionism. People became snitches, it makes people spy on people.

"It makes the job site queasy and cliquey.

"We have been doing some studies with some of the unions we were affiliated with in the UK and it really wasn't working. It was a situation where favouritism ruled."

He said the failure of PBP had affected service delivery, but he stressed the union had not ruled it out altogether.

He said: "There are some areas where it can be implemented, but there's so much we don't know about it. It's like anything else. If you don't know about something you have a tendency to be afraid.

"We will obviously take a look at it. We are not confrontational but we need to know. If it is going to give people more money we certainly won't object to it. If it is going to make workers more efficient? Great."

He said the BPSA had rejected PBP at negotiations two years ago after a membership ballot because the union did not know anything about it then.

"We are still waiting to see the blueprint and the plan for it. So at present our stand is we are against it."

He said Government had never given a timetable for the implementation of PBP and a lot of the information about it was hearsay.

Performance based pay could work for deskbound civil servants who had a finite amount of work to deal with, said Mr. Pemberton, it but would translate less well for those out in the field where circumstances were fluid, such as for district health nurses and health inspectors.

"There are some intangibles you can't gauge - variables.

"At the airport you have a say 1,500 passengers during the summer, you may be able to gauge how quickly and efficiently you can get them through. But you never know what you are going to encounter during the course of the day.

"You might have somewhere like the tax commission and the Account General's office where they go in every day and do a load of work. You can see how efficiently and speedily they do that."