Last week's strike forcibly demonstrates the need for a new direction in labour relations.

Home Affairs Minister Randy Horton has said that the labour legislation needs to be reviewed and reformed to prevent a repeat of last week's events.

He may well be correct. There are legal remedies to deal with almost all forms of labour action, including strikes and lock-outs, albeit contained in a maze of legislation.

The problem comes in the enforcement of injunctions and referrals to tribunals and the speed with which these legal remedies can be put in place.

Last week's action, coming on the heels of Hurricane Fabian, saw a reasonably quick response from Government.

The difficulty comes when striking workers - or employers who have locked out workers - refuse to obey the courts. The Government and the courts then face the problem of sending people to prison and creating martyrs. The better solution is to fine the union or employer for being in contempt and to ensure that the fine is large enough to bring the organisation back to its senses.

It is as true of labour legislation as it is of any other that where there is a law there's a loophole. The Bermuda Industrial Union has been exploiting one in the current law by not actually going on strike, but holding day-long meetings instead. The effect is the same, but the hope is to avoid legal sanctions through semantics.

Fabian or no Fabian, there is no room for secondary strikes of the kind that Government workers and dockworkers took part in last week. All it did was seriously inconvenience ordinary Bermudians who might otherwise have been sympathetic to the union, cost workers pay and the company and Government money.

And now the company and the union are no further ahead than they were a week ago. The dispute will be decided by an impartial third party, an avenue that could have been taken without a strike.

Instead the union has lost the confidence of the public and the Government for no reason at all.

The irony is that on Friday, there was a perfect example of an employer and a union working well together. The Fairmont Southampton, working with the union, has provided a financial package to its employees that will see them lose very little as a result of the hotel's closure as a result of Hurricane Fabian.

And over the last few years, relations between the hotels and the BIU have been remarkably good, in stark contrast to the strikes and rancour that epitomised relations in the 1980s and much of the 1990s.

Of course, that rancour contributed, with other factors, to the demise of much of the hotel industry, and part of the reason for the union's more conciliatory approach to the hotels today is the recognition that it cannot afford to lose any more jobs in the sector.

But better relations between the union and the hotels also came about after a great effort by both sides to the see the other's point of view.

If the union and CableVision took the same approach, the odds are good that they could resolve the problems that now divide them.

This also requires putting an end to the demonisation of individuals in disputes. Neither side has come out of this dispute looking good, but just as Derrick Burgess says he takes his directions from his members, so CableVision general manager Jeremy Elmas and lawyer Alan Dunch are paid by the company and are following the company's policies.

For the union to believe that getting rid of Mr. Elmas will solve their problems is na?ve and dangerous and has rightly been squashed by Mr. Horton; the problems are between the company and the union, not Mr. Elmas and Mr. Burgess.

But Mr. Elmas and Mr. Burgess can start to solve the problems by sitting down at the same table to talk through them in a reasonable manner. They may well find that they are not as far apart as they think.