Education is the key to the public servant's survival through the 21st century, delegates at the Caribbean Public Services Association Conference were told yesterday.

In order to bring about a "win-win'' situation, employers and workers must learn skills necessary for "guidance and leadership which makes for individual harmony and healthy economic growth'', Labour Minister the Hon.

John Irving Pearman said.

"There must be communication on every level of the industrial spectrum,'' he said.

Speaking to approximately 30 delegates representing 15 countries at the 22nd annual conference, Mr. Pearman officially opened the six-day event at the Belmont Hotel.

Chaired by Mr. Eugene Blakeney, general secretary of the Bermuda Public Services Association and Progressive Labour Party MP, the conference will continue last year's theme -- the survival of public servants in the 21st century.

Hosted by the BPSA, it will focus on efforts by some Caribbean countries to restructure their civil services to meet loan conditions set by the International Monetary Fund.

"The IMF and the World Bank are international lending institutions which are presently causing major problems,'' said BPSA president Mr. Stephen Emery.

He said the public sector bears the brunt of any intervention by these institutions through currency devaluation, cutbacks in the civil service, wage freezes, privatisation and decline in social services.

Mr. Emery noted that education was important, adding that trade unions seemed to be well ahead of employers in offering training in industrial relations.

Keynote speaker and assistant general secretary of the Bermuda Industrial Union, Mr. Calvin Smith, also stressed the importance of education.

He said that public service unions had to have more skills in dealing with their membership. Better understanding was necessary in areas such as analytical skills, macroeconomics, balance sheets and wage setting, he said.

Mr. Smith said that cyclical expansion and long term growth affected the size and strength of the labour union. In good times, they grow, and in bad times they shrink.

He said the recession had impacted on trade unions to the extent that the majority turned against parties they traditionally supported.

And he said that civil servants must be paid wages comparable to those in the private sector.

Mr. Smith said the disintegration of the economic bloc was already having an impact on the world with aid previously targeted for the Caribbean going to the Eastern bloc and business formerly invested in the Third World, headed to those communities.

He stressed the importance of distinguishing between temporary and structural changes to help the state of the economy.

Price fixes, he said, were only temporary. What was necessary was to discover the root of the problem.

"We may be producing a product that nobody wants anymore,'' he said.

"Government may be coming and telling us to take cuts in wages when that's not really the problem.'' Mr. Joseph Goddard, general secretary for the CPSA, said the last time he was in Bermuda, the economic and social situation which then prevailed, was not as "threatening, pressing or complex as the situation is now''.

He said that Government, some businesses and some facilities had shifted away from a system of fairly extensive public ownership and that the majority of workers relied on the function of trade unions.

Mr. Goddard said that the main function of the union was to improve and protect its membership. This role he said, was complemented and overlapped by that of the CPSA.

"My presence is a statement as to how important I consider the BPSA and the CPSA to be,'' Premier the Hon. Sir John Swan told delegates. "For 40 years, public services have contributed to the development of our Island.

Stressing the importance of "real'' and "meaningful'' education, he described the conference as an opportunity for all to get together and reflect on changes taking place in the world.