Bermuda Industrial Union yesterday ended its long-running pay dispute with Government by accepting a 1.65 percent increase.The deal works out at $17 a week extra for every member, regardless of their wage, president Chris Furbert told a press conference yesterday.This is marginally more than the $16 a week extra workers had asked for in their latest bid to Government at the beginning of June, but they will have to do without the overtime concessions they were hoping for.On June 2, the union agreed a 1.55 percent pay increase on the average $1,031 wage, with a pledge to work overtime for straight time pay for six months as long as they don’t have to pay payroll tax on their additional hours.Following talks with Government, Mr Furbert said the payroll tax concession was deemed impossible without new legislation going through the House of Assembly. Instead, he said Government had changed the pay increase from 1.55 percent to 1.65 percent. The pay will be retroactive going back to January 1.Mr Furbert said the union had overwhelmingly voted in favour of accepting Government’s offer, telling the media: “Four people voted against the membership, everybody else voted for it.”An estimated 1,500 workers will lose overtime as a result of the deal; some of them currently get double pay when they work overtime, others get time-and-a-half. But many union members have told The Royal Gazette they would rather lose overtime than end up losing their job, with Premier Paula Cox determined to cut costs across the board.In this February’s Budget, Finance Minister Ms Cox said she would trim $10.9 million from Government’s wage bill, taking it to $70.6 million for 2010/11, a drop of 13 percent; although this could come from lowering staff numbers as well as overtime.Two months ago, Government had offered the union a wage freeze and straight time pay instead of overtime until the end of this year.Ms Cox has previously turned down the union’s demand for Ministers to lead by example by taking a symbolic pay cut.But Mr Furbert has praised Government for granting payroll tax exemptions for hotels, while some businesses have been given temporary exemptions from duty, and the unpopular two percent payroll tax increase was rolled back in this year’s Budget.Also yesterday, Mr Furbert criticised One Bermuda Alliance chairman Michael Fahy, who has repeatedly questioned why the union has fallen badly behind in reporting its financial accounts.Mr Fahy says union members want to know how much is in the coffers so they can see whether they can be supported in case of strike action or redundancies this summer; however, the union hasn’t published its statements since 2002.Mr Furbert said he “took great offence” to Mr Fahy implying the union’s finance team is picking up $400,000 without doing the financial reporting it’s required to do by law.He said Mr Fahy’s former party the United Bermuda Party had no audit returns itself from 1993 to 1998.“What were their audits doing?” he said. “They had a whole slew of people who were capable of doing them.”