Government may have dodged a bullet yesterday when it offered ferry pilot Dwayne Pearman a job as a seaman after he was convicted of driving and crashing a ferry while drunk, but it may pay a heavy price for doing so.

To be sure, this was a difficult problem. The safety of ferry passengers must be paramount and the Ministry of Transport claims it has a zero tolerance policy on the subject.

Drinking on board a ferry and crashing it into a dock would seem to be a classic case where zero tolerance should be in effect. The only miracle is that no one was hurt, but that fact should not be used to excuse the ferry pilot's actions.

It would appear that this was indeed the policy of the Marine and Ports Department at the outset. After Mr. Pearman pleaded guilty to the offence in court and was fined, he was dismissed on January 21, although it took several days for that fact to be made public, and only then after repeated requests for information from this newspaper.

It is worth remembering that one reason that Mr. Pearman got away with a reasonably light punishment was because the Senior Magistrate expected him to lose his job and believed that that was part of the overall penalty.

The other side of the coin, which the BIU argued, was that Mr. Pearman had a good prior record, did not realise that he was consuming an alcoholic beverage, and should not be entirely deprived of his livelihood. Instead, it said he should receive counselling and should be demoted.

It is difficult to know which side is right. One must assume that Mr. Pearman, as an experienced pilot, knew that his actions would have consequences.

On the other hand, his past record should be taken into account. To date, Government while emphasizing its policy of zero tolerance on safety, has not said what that policy entails.

In the end, this was an argument well suited to an arbitration, and it is likely the public would have accepted whatever decision was reached. There is little reason to think the union would not receive a fair hearing.

Instead, there is every indication that the Government, fearing more widespread industrial action and disruption if it stood its ground, caved in.

Premier Dr. Ewart Brown's claim that the demotion was always a consideration flies in the face of the facts; as of Friday, the two sides were deadlocked and were therefore referred to arbitration. Certainly, the offer was never made.

Two messages, neither of them good, are now being sent. First, Dr. Brown has apparently undermined his own senior managers in the Department of Marine and Ports Service by reversing their decision to dismiss Mr. Pearman ¿ a decision he had to have been aware of at the time.

And he has also sent a message to the Bermuda Industrial Union that if it chooses to use strong arm tactics and threatens to ignore the law as it relates to referrals to arbitration, it will succeed.

He has undermined his Home Affairs Minister, Sen. David Burch, in the process, because Sen. Burch was threatening just 24 hours earlier to prosecute people who took part in industrial action while arbitration was underway.

Yesterday was not a good day for Government or for labour relations.