under fire from an international union adviser.

Mr. George De Peana, of the International Labour Organisation, said while the Island's public sector had "fairly well-ordered'' industrial relations, there were two major problems in the Island's private sector.

One was "the absence of mutual trust and confidence'' and the other was "a woeful lack of good, sound human relations''.

In the hotel business a major difficulty was the tendency of managers to come and go without studying Bermudian ways, he said.

Mr. De Peana, who is based in Trinidad, has been visiting Bermuda for nearly 20 years as ILO regional adviser on workers' activities.

He is on the Island to attend a Caribbean Public Services Association conference and contribute to the Premier's Task Force on Employment, which is looking at how to improve Bermuda's industrial relations.

Good human relations were an important part of sound industrial relations, said Mr. De Peana.

"But one of the problems is the fact that you have in the hotel industry, at the top level, what I describe as transient management -- people who come here for specific periods and then move on. They bring with them varying backgrounds and it appears to me that time is not taken by them to study this society and the people.

"We have to tackle this, as confrontation seems to be a major problem and this can only be tackled by trying to understand the importance of the sector to the economy and developing an atmosphere of mutual trust and confidence.'' The private sector could consider worker participation, he said. A mechanism needed to be developed which would allow interaction and consensus-building.

There was a need to strengthen arrangements for dealing with grievances at the lowest level possible, he said. This would involve shop stewards and foremen and prevent small issues getting bigger.

Mr. De Peana said industrial relations matters should be tackled without the involvement of third parties if possible. Arbitration was never truly the answer because it failed to please both sides.

Turning to the role of Government, Mr. De Peana added: "I think there is a tendency here to legislate to fight fires. I think that in industrial relations governments have to be careful not to over-legislate.

"Legislation in itself does not solve problems, and you can create more by over-legislation. My own advice would be for caution.'' The Task Force on Employment is also talking this week to industrial relations expert Dr. Wolf Dieter Lindner, adviser to the Confederation of German Employers' Associations in Cologne.

He said that in his country, there were separate collective agreements on wages and conditions, both of which were legally binding. Wage agreements were in force for a year, and agreements on conditions could last several years.

Instead of negotiations taking place between unions and employers in individual companies, they took place on an industry-wide basis.

Either side in a dispute could choose arbitration, and there was little government involvement in negotiations. The percentages needed to get agreement in a ballot of union members were laid down by the union.

Mr. Alfred Oughton, president of Belco and chairman of the task force's workplace committee, said: "While it's generally perceived in Bermuda that industrial relations are in a bad state, if you look at it worldwide I think our track record is not bad by any stretch of the imagination.'' But a problem was the speed by which small situations became national ones, he said.

A major theme coming out of the task force's discussions so far was the lack of information employees had about the organisations they worked for.

CRITICAL -- Mr. George De Peana of the ILO.