Better late than never. The Director of the Department of Industrial & Employment Relations (DIER), Dr Noel Vella, had his first report as registrar of trade unions – showing the state of the nation’s trade union and employer association membership as at the end of June 2005 – published in the Government Gazette on 20 January 2006. (This is almost five months late, since the law recommends publication in August.) The data reveals the same story we have come to expect since the annus mirabilis of 2001 – which registered the highest recorded trade union membership figures in Malta’s history: 87,158. We have witnessed, over the past four years, a slow but steady decline in general trade union membership; this is broken down into, on one hand, token increases by the Unjon Haddiema Maghqudin (UHM), the Malta Union of Teachers (MUT), the Malta Union of Bank Employees (MUBE) and the Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses (MUMN); all this offset on the other hand by a membership decrease in the ranks of the General Workers’ Union (GWU).
Faithful to the national demographical trend, the proportion of pensioners in both the GWU and UHM is increasing: 14.2 per cent of GWU membership; and 8.5 per cent of the UHM (there were 13.8 per cent and 8.1 per cent respectively in 2004). Out of 85,679 reported trade union members, just over one tenth (8,740) are pensioners. The strongest increase this last year is reported by the MUT: a surge of almost 600 new members since June 2004. Only one new trade union has been registered in the period under review: the ignominiously titled Rampa Union with 43 workers. This development increases the number of trade unions active at Air Malta to five – the largest number outside the public service.
The GWU continues to bear the brunt of the membership decrease: it has lost almost 3,000 members since 2001. It remains as large as all the other unions put together in terms of membership; but that situation may change in the next couple of years.
A critical commentary is warranted with respect to a phenomenon that becomes glaring when the latest report is compared with that issued for the previous year (and published on 30 December 2004). The latest report states that no trade unions or employer associations have been cancelled during the period under review; so does the December 2004 report. Yet, this does not suggest that existing unions are all alive and kicking. Various unions have failed to submit valid membership returns, for two or even three years in a row. The: Drydocks Senior & Executive Staff Union reported 37 members in its latest submission of June 2003; while five other trade unions submitted their last return in June 2002: Musician & Entertainers Union (236); Water Services Corporation Professional Staff Union (21); Attorney General’s Legal Office Professional Union (10); Union of HSBC Legal Graduates (8); and University of Malta Workers Union (19). For all intents and purposes, a union which fails to comply at law with reporting requirements, not once, but twice, or even three times in a row, is probably moribund. Thus, should the Department of Industrial and Employment Relations (DIER) follow through these ‘no-shows’ with cancellations, as is the logical next step, we would not have 33 trade unions on our register, but probably 27.
A similar situation exists in employer associations. The Farmers’ Association, a powerful force in its day, has failed to submit returns since 2002. So has the Association of Private Hire Bus Owners and the Association of Licensed Foreign Exchange Dealers. The Gozo Bus Owners Association and the Yacht Traders Association have not submitted returns since 2003.
The decline in trade union organisations reminds us of a similar phenomenon that occurred in the mid-1980s, though the circumstances are very different. The nadir of trade unions in Malta was achieved in 1984 with only 14 registered trade unions: that was the time of the partisan ‘cold war’ that prevailed in the aftermath of the bizarre election result of 1981. Workers (as well as small unions) were then under immense pressure to either join the GWU or the ‘free’ unions under the umbrella of the CMTU, of which the UHM was the largest and only general union. The main challenge today is totally different, though a reduction in the number of trade unions is one likely effect. It is called employee relations (rather than industrial relations), where conditions of employment are negotiated between manager and employee, without the intermediary role of trade unions, and individually rather than collectively. A much larger (and still growing) percentage of the workforce with graduate credentials possibly contributes to this, since those who advance on the basis of merit are more likely to shun collective organisation which tends towards an equalization of working conditions. An increasingly sophisticated cadre of professional human resource managers is advancing this practice and its accompanying philosophy, especially in the private sector. (HSBC makes an excellent case with its global HR corporate ethos, a strongly unionised workforce, and now upholding a collective agreement that significantly rewards merit.) What this leads to is a growing chasm in the differences between working practices in the public sector (which remains solidly unionised) and the private sector (where trade union penetration is being steadily eroded). Corporations and statutory bodies, caught right in between this contested space, are being pulled this way and that. Overall, perhaps many of the unions which have failed to submit returns to the DIER have fallen victim to HR policies that have successfully lured their members away.
Prof. Godfrey Baldacchino is Canada Research Chair (Island Studies) at the University of Prince Edward Island, Canada, and Visiting Professor to the University of Malta where he is the Director of the Centre for Labour Studies. The views expressed above are his own.
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