As a rule, Mr Cassar White said, management follows the collective agreement signed last November. But where the agreement is not clear enough, management follows the Industrial Relations Act and the various legal notices which apply. The collective agreement cancels and has precedence over any previous agreement.

The dockyards management is also guided by the commercial aims of the dockyard, Mr Cassar White said, which were explained at the Task Force meetings at which the union was represented by its highest officials. The task force heard about projections of revenue and expenditure for the seven years covered by the agreement.

Meetings have also been held for the dockyard managers and they were told where the dockyards intends to go in these seven years and what commitments has it made to reduce the subsidies from public funds.

Flexibility multiskill

This is an allowance that the dockyards management is ready to pay in cases where an employee is trained to do additional work over and above his normal skill. This amounts to Lm15 a week and is intended to persuade dockyard employees to learn a new skill, such as a welder learning to be an electrician: in this case the employee gets training and an allowance for the time when he uses his newly-acquired skill.

Management cannot accept, Mr Cassar White said, the union’s interpretation that this allowance should be given to any worker who is asked to help other workers in other skills to help the work being done get done faster. This kind of flexibility existed already in the past and this is not the time, Mr Cassar White said, to pay an allowance for this to continue to be done,.

The union issued a directive which amounts to a work to rule directive, Mr Cassar White said, and this is affecting productivity at the dockyard.

Casual night work

There is sometimes need for short term night work (they used to be called casual nights) either due to emergencies or due to the urgency of certain work.

There is not so much need for night shift today, Mr Cassar White said, either due to better planning of work and also due to the introduction of the two-shift system.

The old system used to be that after the normal hours of the back up force, work used to be paid at a 1.5 rate till midnight, following which at double the rate after midnight.

Today, management is ready to pay the normal overtime rates as exist in the collective agreement for all extra work done after the end of the late evening shift. Management does not agree to reintroduce the previous arrangement as this would increase expenses. The Industrial Relations Act supports management’s stand.

Paid Rest

This system too, Mr Cassar White said, is a complicated system which existed before. When workers on daytime duty were needed at night they used to be given a certain amount of hours off and be paid for this.

The new system is planned so that who is needed to shift from daytime duty to night-time duty during a particular week would not be needed to work during the day when he is working nights. Naturally, when he works night, he is paid the night shift premium as contemplated in the new collective agreement.

So the paid rest concept as existed in the past is no longer applicable, Mr Cassar White said. Today a worker is paid for all the hours he works at the rate that applies. As much as possible, workers are not being given excessive hours of work for they should have a sufficient amount of time to rest. There is no intention of re-introducing systems that used to exist in the past, Mr Cassar White said.

Tank Cleaning Farm

When ships need to use the Tank Cleaning Farm at Ricasoli they sometimes require a 24-hour operation for some days.

Management believes that the most effective way of doing this work without incurring extra expenditure is to temporarily introduce two 12-hour shifts. Management does not think that training more people to organise three shifts instead of two at the tank cleaning farm is a good idea when this applies for just a few days in a year.

Consultations have started on a technical level with the manager and the tank cleaning farm workers to find the best solution which serves the clients’ needs and which costs the least.

Naturally, even here management is complying with the collective agreement which says that those who work for more than eight hours on shift are paid overtime for any extra hours worked. It seems that the union would like workers to be paid at a rate which is higher than the overtime rate as provided for in the collective agreement.

The union will be consulted before this system is put in place, Mr Cassar White said.

Foreign workers

The dockyards from time to time needs to employ foreign workers due to a temporary shortage of workers. Recently six foreign workers were brought in to do scaffolding work at the Marsa dock as it was thought that work planned for Cospicua, including that on a tanker which was expected for Number 6 Dock, would absorb all the trained scaffolders at the dockyard.

But after the foreign workers had been contracted to come, the ship owner decided to postpone sending the ship by a few weeks. So the workers planned for this job were given other work to do.

Before the foreign workers were contracted to come, the production executive had informed the union with these plans and asked it to suspend the work to rule directive so that there would be no need for foreign workers. The union refused to do so. Due to pressing commitments about the dockyard’s clients, management decided to bring in these workers who were ready to work as required.

Had there not been this directive by the union, Mr Cassar White said, management would have ordered workers from other skills to help the dockyard’s trained scaffolders and thus finish the work. This however cannot be done if every time someone is asked to help in another skill additional payment is asked for.

After 10 days working at the dockyard, a foreign worker coming from country whose wages are less than ours, costs the dockyard less than a regular dockyard worker. However, management goes for foreign workers only in extraordinary circumstances.

The galvanising unit

The galvanising unit at present is shut down because the workers who usually work in this unit are obeying a union directive not to work there unless they are given the flexibility multi skill allowance. Before the collective agreement, these workers who normally work as steel workers, used to do this work and get allowances related to dangers from fumes and from splatter when items are being galvanised.

Management believes that danger should be managed in a different way, through safety audits in all places of work and through ensuring that dangers are reduced, not through paying allowances to workers because they are exposed to uncontrolled dangers.

These past few weeks, Mr Cassar White said, the dockyard has lost many of the clients it used to have for jobs at the galvanising unit because this is not operational.

Special arrangements for workers

In the past, workers working outside the dockyard used to be given an allowance. Thus, workers on sea trials after a ship is repaired at the dockyard used to get an allowance. Management believes this is an integral part of the work that employees at a ship repair yard should so, and thus they should not get an allowance.

Other workers are sometimes required to work elsewhere in Malta, such as the freeport. They too used to get an allowance for this. Management believes that work outside the dockyard should not be paid at extra rates.

An allowance used to be paid to workers who were required to work on a ship as it was travelling. Management is ready to pay an allowance for this kind of work, although not at the rate which they used to get before the collective agreement

Everyone knows what the dockyards are facing, Mr Cassar White said in conclusion. The dockyards are competing in a difficult market and unless productivity is increased and expenses cut, the dockyard cannot reduce its dependence on subsidies. The dockyard’s clients are fed up with the low level of productivity at Malta Shipyards as well as the threat of bad industrial relations which may affect their ships. Recently, the dockyards management has also received serious complaints in writing about safety standards being ignored by certain workers.

Every effort is being done to improve discipline but no organisation can improve itself and become viable unless all involved understand, accept and seriously work to start on a new chapter instead of on those paths which led us nowhere in the past, Mr Cassar White said.