The latest eruption in the Pro-Active dispute will have come as a bitter shock to many people.

Two weeks, ago Acting Premier Paula Cox and the Bermuda Industrial Union had "a meeting of the minds" over the union's concerns and everything seemed to be settled.

Now the Island is once again living under the possibility of a strike over what is, as Opposition Leader Grant Gibbons said on Sunday, essentially a financial dispute.

On Sunday, Julian Hall, who seems to be advising Pro-Active and the union, denied the union had threatened a strike over the issue. But the fact remains that this is one of the union's options ? and it may be the only meaningful one if the union is unwilling to negotiate this dispute.

In the meantime, there continues to be a good deal of confusion about the legal problems at the heart of the issue.

The union is claiming that because subsidiary Union Assets Holdings Ltd. had issued a performance bond to Pro-Active, and because it then provided as much as $4 million to help Pro-Active with its cash flow using the company's equipment as security, it now has a right to take over the project in order to recover its money.

It may be that the contract is written in such a way to allow this, even though Mr. Hall admits he is relying on "common law" in the absence of any precedent in Bermudian or British law.

But if Mr. Hall is relying on common law, Government's common sense explanation in Saturday's newspaper seems much more rational.

Government said that if an individual is dissatisfied with the contractor building his house and fires him, the individual must have the right to choose the replacement, not the creditor of the fired contractor.

On a related note, Government should allow Pro-Active access to the site immediately to remove its equipment. Leaving it on site will simply cause more legal problems later on when the claims will come that the equipment has been damaged or has been allowed to deteriorate.

While it is easy to have sympathy for the Pro-Active workers who are pawns in this whole dispute, it is difficult to empathise with the union's leadership, who appear to be trying to use the BIU's membership to force a quick resolution to a problem which has been caused at least in part by its own bad management.

The union, through UAH, chose to lend Pro-Active $4 million of its members money. Since it was already potentially exposed to a claim from Government of $6.8 million, this was always going to be risky.

The union surely must have been aware that just because Pro-Active said Government owed it a certain amount of money, there was no guarantee it was going to get the full amount. Disputes over payments on a project of this kind are quite normal and often takes months, if not years, to resolve.

So the union's members should ask themselves carefully whether they really want to take any kind of industrial action to rescue the union's leadership from this financial gamble, especially when the public, and presumably the union's own members, have not seen the BIU's accounts in five years.

Assuming that Government has a legitimate case, it is vital that it stands its ground regardless of its labour ties. Ultimately, these issues have to be decided either through negotiation, through arbitration or in the courts.