Industrial Union can call a strike if it wishes. The number of workers responding to a well organised strike call must have been a disappointment to the BIU and it may be that the legal ruling against the strike saved the BIU's face. The problem, of course, is that Bermuda as a whole will suffer the lingering effects of another hotels disruption for months to come and maybe forever because the strike demonstrated once again that Bermuda is careless with its visitors...not the BIU, not the hotels, Bermuda. Some travel agents will be saying to customers this week: "Better not go to Bermuda.

There's strike trouble there again.'' Until last Friday's ruling that the hotels' strike was illegal, it had seemed to many people that the Bermuda Industrial Union had been allowed to create for itself a place that was above the law. The union was allowed to strike and disrupt Bermuda without having to worry about consequences. The BIU could carry out that disruption after a vote of a minority of its members which was not cast in secret.

We are not suggesting an anti-union agenda, but we are suggesting that the BIU should have no greater rights in Bermuda than an individual does or than any other group does. Because it can call strikes should not mean that those strikes give the BIU any greater consideration or any less consideration than that granted to anyone else or to any other group.

The BIU was founded to protect and promote Bermuda's workers. It has achieved a great deal. However, that may no longer be its primary aim and its achievements appear to be in the past. Its primary aim now may be its hierarchy's political agenda. That is not and was not the function of the union. It may be that some BIU action comes about because the BIU has become politicised in a way which does not act to the total good of its members or of the Country. It may be that sometimes industrial action in Bermuda is not designed to better the lot of union members but to further the aims of some of its people or to embarrass a Government which is not always sympathetic to the BIU, thus advancing the Progressive Labour Party which, rightly or wrongly, the BIU sees as its ally. We say rightly or wrongly because we suspect that if the PLP should come to power it might well have its own problems with the BIU.

We have all heard from the Task Force on Employment that Bermuda now needs skilled labour and that there is a growing problem for unskilled workers.

Indeed, the world in which Bermudians function is moving away from anything which demands unskilled labour. In Bermuda, unskilled labour has traditionally been absorbed by the hotels where jobs were easy to get and returns were reasonable, even generous. But that is changing and unskilled jobs are declining and the situation should be a major concern for the BIU. We think the union should build on its past success and move ahead to assist its members to succeed in today's job market rather than living in the past and organising strikes which damage that very market.

Bermuda's hotel industry is a business and, at this point, a money losing business. Every country protects its premier industry for the good of the whole. The hotels cannot go on if their success is not assisted by Government and if they are hobbled at every move by industrial action. The BIU could assist hotels to succeed and protect jobs. Like any other business, hotels have to be free enough to survive in a very competitive world so that they can pay their workers fair wages for fair labour. At the same time, it is up to Government to ensure there is legislation in force to protect those workers from management abuses.

What Bermuda needs is fair labour laws fairly applied.