The Bermuda Industrial Union needs to deal with “in-house” issues, president Chris Furbert conceded as he spoke at the end of a lengthy meeting yesterday.

Mr Furbert said the four-hour session at the BIU headquarters was “a much needed meeting”, telling a press conference: “I’ve coined it as a new day, a new beginning — because certainly there are some things that we can do a bit better going forward. We’re certainly hoping, once we have that dialogue with the membership.”

Mr Furbert said he would not declare that “all is well with the membership”. He added: “We have got some in-house matters as a union that we have to deal with, and we are going to deal with them.”

About 150 union members braved the morning’s downpour, turning out from 9am to pack the forum.

One theme of the meeting, Mr Furbert said, was that many perceived this issue had become about himself. In future, he said, divisional leaders will sit alongside the BIU president at press conferences.

He pledged to have a conversation among members on how to tackle the issues, which include police using pepper spray on demonstrators outside the House of Assembly on December 2.

Speaking later to The Royal Gazette, he gave examples of further possible changes.

“It was never our intention to cause disruption unnecessarily,” he said. “All divisions of the BIU met and discussed how we can do things differently in the future. We talked about the general direction of the BIU — it’s 2017 now.

“How can we change? Does it mean we have a partial service while these things are going on?

“When Ewart Brown was Minister of Transport and Glenn Simmons was director of the DPT [Department of Public Transportation] we had a conversation then, but Mr Simmons said he didn’t know how that could work.

“Maybe we can work on that challenge for the future. When it’s down, it inconveniences a lot of people.”

At the press conference, Mr Furbert insisted that the BIU’s stand-off with the Government that provoked industrial action this week remains “alive and well”, including the threat to the America’s Cup.

Mr Furbert also spoke passionately about the refusal to renew the work permit for the Reverend Nicholas Tweed at St Paul AME Church, which has been a driving factor in its campaign against the Government in recent days.

The post of pastor is “not a job; it’s a calling”, he said, insisting that pastors in the African Methodist Episcopal Church were appointed by the Bishop, the Right Reverend Gregory Ingram, rather than being advertised.

Mr Furbert said repeatedly that the Department of Immigration’s advertising requirements amounted to policy rather than law. “It should be noted that certain job categories are exempt from work permit control, from the [Bermuda Immigration and Protection] Act.

“The Government needs to stop playing games with the people. We told them there were two Bermudas and, no matter how many times they try to defend that it is not, this proves that there are.”

Although he conceded that he had no proof to support his view, Mr Furbert maintained that the introduction of advertising requirements for church positions in 2014 was done with the intention of targeting Mr Tweed.

“It was certainly about him,” he claimed. “Maybe I have no proof; I have a theory and I’m going to stick with my theory.”

Mr Furbert also said home affairs minister Patricia Gordon-Pamplin’s new church had a pastor on a work permit, and attacked finance minister Bob Richards’s plan for the airport development, labelling him “an idiot”, which drew cheers from members.

The union head stood strong against suggestions this week that members were split on backing the “ultimatum”, as he called it on Tuesday night.

“Every employer’s ultimate aim is to divide and conquer the BIU membership,” he said.

But Mr Furbert was also firm that union members who declined to attend meetings when invited would lose their say.

“If there’s a quorum, they can make a decision in your absence.”