Bermuda Industrial Union President Chris Furbert has defended the cost cutting agreement made between Government and its employees and criticised members who complained to the media about the deal, saying their concerns should have been taken up internally.“If you have a question or concern, going to the media is not the correct thing to do,” Mr Furbert said.At a press conference yesterday afternoon, Mr Furbert said that the agreement in which all public sector workers agreed to take a day off a month unpaid to help save Government money, was properly ratified by the BIU.“If there is a membership meeting called for its members, those members who show up — provided there is a quorum according to the constitution — those members sit there and make decisions on behalf of everybody.“So if you decide you are not going to come to the meeting, we are not doing anything that was unconstitutional.”The signing of a five point MOU between the Trade Union Congress and Government was announced on Thursday.But, according to Mr Furbert, some of his members complained to Bermuda Broadcasting Company that the membership should have been consulted before the agreement was finalised.Mr Furbert added: “Let us be clear why the unions came together and work with the Government.“It was about support of country, as to the reason why we made that decision. It wasn’t because of Progressive Labour Party or One Bermuda Alliance or whatever it is we recognise that the Government was asking us for assistance.“And based on that the TUC came together as one and had one set of negotiations because the Government said we need to make savings and we put together a package to make savings.”He said Government was looking at a 15 percent cut in salaries, and cut into sick leave and overtime.“We told them there’s no way we can go back to our membership, talk about overtime, as well as a wage freeze as well as giving up five percent because members would see that as a double barrel whammy.“We’ve got to leave something on the table that allows our members to get something and patch up the five percent that they are going to lose in salary,” he said. “So leaving the overtime there was something that we could sell.”Government had also agreed to ask certain private sector organisations such as insurers, banks and the electricity utility to play their part in helping to reduce the burden on the public sector workers.But Mr Furbert said that the TUC was aware that there were no guarantees.“We could not guarantee that the banks were going to do something with the mortgage rates. We couldn’t guarantee that Belco was going to lower their electricity bill.“All we had was an undertaking that the Government was going to send those letters and we were going to do what we can to try and get those companies to assist recognising that we are truly supposed to be all in this together. ”