At a time when people need to be working together to save the Bermuda economy, claims that employers and the One Bermuda Alliance are working together to make people unemployed as part of some kind of devious plot to trip up the Government are inexplicable.

The statement, made by Trade Union Congress past president Maynard Dill, missed the point that most employers have desperately struggled to keep people employed past the point when it made economic sense.

Mr Dill was right that a spiral can be created in a recession. Growth requires people to spend money, and people without jobs will spend less. The spiral continues because less spending then leads to more job cuts and so on.

But employers cannot hire when their revenues are dropping; this would simply lead to bankruptcy and the loss of all jobs.

What is needed is confidence and that can only occur when businesses are able to become competitive and to start growing again.

Mr Dill’s statements point up the need for more dialogue and discussion between employers and trade unions. Only when all understand the depth of the economic crisis will people be able to work together to get out of it.