Earlier this week, newly elected MP and long-time Bermuda Industrial Union official George Scott issued an appeal in this newspaper for labour legislation to be reformed.

According to Mr. Scott, current laws that force striking employees to go back to work "tie the hands of the workers" because "there's a fundamental right to withdraw labour".

Mr. Scott wants the legislation weakened to reinforce that "fundamental right".

At its most basic level, this is true. If an employee is unhappy with the terms and conditions of their employment, they can leave. In some cases, employees will pull out en bloc in the hope of resolving an issue.

Unions have taken this a step further by having mechanisms in place for unionised workers in unrelated industries strike in sympathy.

Thus last month Government workers, dockworkers and telephone company workers took industrial action in sympathy with CableVision workers who were striking over the dismissal of an employee.

Did these workers have the right to strike any time, anywhere? Yes, according to Mr. Scott. Many others would disagree, especially in circumstances like those after Fabian when the Island needed supplies, people needed public transport to get to work and to school and so on.

The right of aggrieved employees to withdraw their labour is recognised in labour legislation, although it is not so fundamental that it is included in the Constitution or the Human Rights Act.

But the labour legislation also sets up frameworks designed not to prevent workers from striking, but to remove the necessity of strikes by establishing cooling off periods in the cases of essential services and by setting up processes of mediation, arbitration or boards of inquiry in other sectors of the economy to resolve these issues.

And that is the key. If there are mechanisms in place to bring about just and equable resolutions to issues in the workplace without employees having to take the costly and damaging step of going on strike (or employers locking out their staff) then that must be to the good. In almost all cases, talking is better than striking, and of that gets nowhere then Government, as a neutral third party, should be able to refer the matter to a tribunal of some kind for resolution.

The Employment Act takes this a step further by giving Government the power to refer problems involving non-unionised staff to a tribunal as well.

It is hard to identify a strike in the last 30 years in which it can be fairly and honestly said that someone "won". Instead, even if wage increases or working conditions were improved, there has ultimately been a loss somewhere along the line and long standing damage done. That does not mean that workers will not have grievances, or that employers will always get it right. But resolving these issues peacefully without a strike must be the ideal and when workers and employers who have nothing to do with a dispute are pulled in, there is no recompense for the damage done. There was once a belief in this country that the "tap" for tourism and other industries could be turned "off" and "on" at will. One need only look at the ruins of the hotel industry to see where that belief got the Island.

The problem now is not that workers are prevented from striking - they're not. The problem is that disputes escalate far too quickly into strikes when they could be resolved, and when they are referred to a tribunal, as in the case of CableVision, the teachers and the prisons, the referral is flouted and ignored.