Our daily newspapers have recently been giving prominence to the threats made by the General Workers Union to the livelihood of many Maltese – threats of industrial unrest which, by sheer coincidence, came straight after a majority victory by the Malta Labour Party in the 12 March local council elections.
Many readers question that, by not voting, or by voting for the Labour Party, the heads that still control and pull the strings in the socialist camp, and who thrive on instability, will make a reappearance.
They are probably right. The responsibility of such actions, even that of non-voting, can lead to strikes, warnings and disruption in our economic situation.
A union that has just finished rallying the people on to the streets to ask for work, has stopped people from working. How ironic. A union and its bedmate, the Labour Party, insist on creating jobs and defending the unemployed, and then choose strategic employees, in different sections at the airport or at Enemalta, to bring Malta to a halt.
The union says it will take the matter up internationally. They (the foreigners) probably know about it already, as the first flight to be hit was a British Airways one. Apart from flight delays, that today are covered by European Union regulations, and customer dissatisfaction, stopping an airline from flying on time will probably cause more delays, as most flights go on to other destinations after arriving from Malta. Therefore the GWU could not have made a better advertising campaign for Malta than it did.
Time-wise, these actions come – again by sheer coincidence, I suppose – on the threshold of the summer, before the Easter holidays and in the tourist booking season, directly endangering thousands of Maltese jobs and probably those of some of their own union members.
How irresponsible, and what hypocrisy that the union then says that it is defending the Maltese worker. Its function today should be safeguarding the workers’ place of work.
The world changes, work practices change and we all have to adapt. If we do not, the consequences are there for all to see.
Defending an employee who received over 30 warnings, and expecting workers to be paid when they are suspended, however, is stretching the argument a bit too far. Perhaps no other argument exists, and the GWU is faced with the problem of making its voice heard – come what may, and on any trivial issue?
These points are to be pondered upon, as any irresponsible action is likely to alienate investors and discourage locals from investing, as we see the old Labour guard again.
Protest vote or not, do we really want Malta to return to those bleak times of battle and confrontation? Let us learn from the small episode of this union to bring us back to reality. Why lose all the progress we have made in Malta, which is due only to consecutive nationalist governments, and which prepared the atmosphere for investment and work in different fields?
Employment figures just published by the National Statistics Office show a slight fall in the number of unemployed year on year, month on previous month. Small in figures as this may seem, it is a significant step in the right direction. Let this government work, notwithstanding the obstacles, and let it care for everyone in the way to which we are all accustomed.
In contrast to the above, we have a critical Labour Party which has yet to unveil its official programme of alternatives. Shrouded in high secrecy, we are all waiting in trepidation for the vision that the opposition has for us Maltese. So far, the proposals to which we have had access, and which have been made public, strike at the heart of the middle class.
This Labour Party has been accepted into the fold of the European Socialist group and almost immediately the foreign socialists came to Malta to ask their brothers to vote for the European Constitution. Keeping up with so many u-turns in their way of doing politics has become a full-time job. No wonder they found it hard to govern, and could not cope with the responsibility of leading the country. They led us nowhere really – except into a freezer.
A word of thanks to Sliema local council, whose timely ordering of work in Rudolphe Street avoided Sliema ending up without water, apart from the fact that the street needed attention anyway. The signage is appropriate and the inconvenience acceptable in order to have a better road – both on the surface and underneath it. The same goes for St George’s Road and Triq il-Meditterran, where two much-needed projects are running on schedule, to the gratitude of residents, drivers and the community in general.
My congratulations to the newly elected councils of St Julian’s and Pembroke. May the councillors, old and new, be a focal point for the needs of residents, and their willingness to work for the locality translated into actual concrete situations.
Robert Arrigo is a Nationalist MP