The Bermuda Government will have to pay some union legal costs after a failed effort to get a permanent injunction to halt future walkouts.

The Minister of Home Affairs sought injunctions against five unions — the Bermuda Industrial Union, the Bermuda Public Service Union, the Bermuda Union of Teachers, the Prison Officers Association and the Fire Officers Association — to prevent union walkouts last year.

The move came after a dispute between the parties over the proposed extension of furlough days, which led to marches and days of occupation of the grounds of the Cabinet Building in January last year.

The Supreme Court refused the Minister’s application but did grant declaratory relief, ruling the industrial action had been unlawful. While Chief Justice Ian Kawaley provisionally proposed that both sides should bear their own legal costs to improve their chances of resolving future disputes, the unions applied to recover some their costs, arguing they had been successful overall.

In a ruling delivered on March 21, Dr Justice Kawaley dismissed claims by the unions that the minister had acted in bad faith and accepted that the unions had from the outset denied any wrongdoing, taking no steps that would have allowed the courts to determine the issue of the injunction and the issue of the declaratory relief separately.

However, he noted that the minister had sought an unprecedented form of injunctive relief, and counsel for the minister had conceded that the threshold for such relief was high, instead focusing on the declaratory relief.

Dr Justice Kawaley concluded: “Although the main ‘event’ was the application for a permanent injunction, the application for declaratory relief was clearly a subsidiary ‘event’. This is reflected in the fact that the unions insisted on defending the legality of their conduct even after it became apparent that the court was not likely to grant the primary head of relief.

“This suggests that the union achieved a measure of success which should reduce the award to which the minister would otherwise have been entitled, as the minister could not plausibly deny.

“It was conceded that 50 per cent reduction of the unions’ costs was appropriate.”

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