Historically, the Bermuda Public Service Union has been known as the peaceful union in the Bermuda labour landscape. Traditionally, its pay negotiations have been managed without much rancour, and it has been rare to see much, if any, workplace militancy.

Indeed, it is thought that the last time the BPSU's Civil Service members (then the BPSA) went on strike was in the 1970s. So that should tell the public that the BPSU's issue of a 21-day strike notice last week meant the union was deadly serious about its current dispute with Government, if its peaceful walk on the Cabinet Office during the Throne Speech did not.

It's hard not to have some sympathy with the union. The dispute centres around Government's pay offer to the union for the next year of a four percent pay increase. That's a decent offer, which the union would apparently accept. However, Government also wants civil servants to contribute an additional one percent of their salaries to their pension fund.

That's reasonable too. Defined benefit pension funds, in which pensions are fixed on the basis of salary and length of service, are running into financial trouble all over the world as the number of retirees grow. Civil servants who want a pension tomorrow need to pay for it today. Otherwise, either someone else ¿ the taxpayer ¿ is going to have to bail out the fund, or thousands of retired civil servants are going to find themselves on financial assistance.

It can be argued that civil servants shouldn't be grumbling since they will get their contributions back later in their pensions; this "contribution" is merely a form of forced savings. That is true, but the argument gives little comfort to Government employees who are trying to make ends meet in an era of rising prices.

What Government could consider is tying an increase in salaries to performance. The "Blue Book" of detailed spending estimates produced for Friday's Budget contains pages of output measures which could be used to give civil servants performance pay. Where departments and Ministries meet their targets, they get more pay. To be sure, the details of these kinds of arrangements are always more complicated than they look, but giving bonuses in return for saving money or performing efficiently might save Government money in the long run.