This week's walkout by Government blue collar workers in support of airport firefighters marked a new low in Bermuda labour relations.

As noted by Home Affairs Minister Terry Lister, the strike was illegal and should not have occurred.

The action was, quite simply, an example of the Bermuda Industrial Union using muscle to get what it has so far failed to achieve in negotiations and in the courts. That should have been unacceptable to the Government or to the public.

Those firefighters who want the union to act as its collective bargaining agent may, as Home Affairs Minister Terry Lister stated, have had the right to strike. But the other workers in essential services who downed tools did not.

On the day of the strike, Transport Minister Ewart Brown stated, rightly, that wildcat strikes every few weeks have got to stop. In this case, they may have done tremendous harm to the tourism industry. And Mr. Lister said the workers were unlikely to be paid.

Bermuda gained a deserved reputation for labour strife in the 1980s and 1990s which is one reason for the dismal state of the tourism industry today. It cannot afford to add to that.

But several hours after the Ministers had made their case, the situation changed. Government, apparently led by the Premier, convinced BAS Serco to sit down with the union and it later seemed that a negotiated agreement would be settled.

In can be argued that Bermuda could not afford a prolonged, Islandwide strike. But it begs the question of who is setting policy and what laws and the courts are for and whether, the next time the union has a gripe it has been given the green flag to do the same again.

The issue at the Airport comes down to the question of who is entitled to represent the employees at the Airport Fire Station.

It would appear that just six of the 18 Airport firefighters are members of the BIU and BAS-Serco argues that this is inadequate for them to be represented. An arbitration panel a year ago basically split the difference by establishing two separate bargaining units. BAS Serco then went to court to get a ruling on the matter.

In the meantime, the union issued a 21-day strike notice in December and Home Affairs Minister Terry Lister referred that dispute to arbitration. That referral was then taken to court where it was ruled the BIU could not attend the arbitration pending the court decision. Therefore, the union, no longer a party to the arbitration, went on strike.

The long term answer to this should have been to wait until the courts had ruled whether the union can act as a bargaining agent or not. Instead the union decided it was not prepared to follow the same laws and procedures that the rest of the community must and is tried to force a resolution. Apparently, it succeeded.

If BIU president Derrick Burgess does not like the law and the process, he can, as an MP, try to change it. And the union can lobby to get the law changed. For the BIU to take matters into its own hands should be repugnant to law-abiding people everywhere.

If the union believed it had a case that two separate bargaining units , it should have tried it in the courts and not on the streets. Now though, the precedent has been set that rule of force is greater than the rule of law.