When the Progressive Labour Party was elected to power almost ten years ago, one of the arguments in its favour was that as a labour party, it would be better able to reach peaceful labour agreements than the pro-business United Bermuda Party Government.

That has not entirely been the case. It is true that there have not been many of the serious labour interruptions like the Bermuda Forwarders strike that wracked the Island in the 1990s, notwithstanding yesterday's electrical workers' walkout.

And there has been a remarkable period of labour peace in the hotels, which began when Derrick Burgess, now the Minister of Works, took over the presidency of the Bermuda Industrial Union and introduced a degree of sanity to what had often been acrimonious negotiations before that.

Ironically, one area where Government has been less successful in reaching negotiated settlements has been with its own employees.

In the last few months, a series of disputes between Government employees and the Government have been referred to arbitration after the two sides failed to reach agreement.

The latest of those concerns the Government and the Bermuda Union of Teachers, when a strike was narrowly averted last Thursday when that dispute, over substitute teachers, was referred to arbitration.

In this case, however, Government was right to stick to its guns and not to give way.

The dispute concerns a practice begun three years ago in which a substitute teacher was assigned to each of the Island's public schools to cover teachers who were either absent or sick. Although this idea was apparently discussed in contract negotiations then, it was never included in the teachers' collective bargaining agreement. This year, the Ministry of Education decided to abolish the system, largely because of its cost.

The teachers have protested, claiming that they have been forced to cover for absences, combine classes, or run the risk of leaving children unsupervised. To be sure, having a dedicated teacher on call is a nice luxury, but Government is right to question whether it is genuinely cost effective especially given that the dedicated substitutes would be paid whether they were needed or not.

Government has come to the conclusion that it is not, and has reverted to the old system of using a poll of substitute teachers who can be sent to any school in the event of absences. This system is not perfect either, and can be an administrative headache. But it is also workable, and the teachers should face facts that they have had a system in place that is not now affordable.

Few businesses or other Government departments can afford to have "substitutes" who are on call at any given time, and teachers do not automatically deserve to be the exception. That is not to say that teaching is not an arduous job; being on your feet in front of 20 often rambunctious students for several hours a day is tough, and something that people who are not teachers may find hard to grasp.

But teachers already have 80 minutes a day of "non-contact" time along with other benefits, and they should keep their powder dry for other fights that will almost certainly crop up as the Island's education reforms come into place.