In 1981 a handful of academics with the support of trade union officials endeavoured in an ambitious project set to launch the tuition of industrial democracy at university level. It was eventually achieved by the Foundation of the Workers’ Participation and Development Centre.

The project was facilitated by the then Dom Mintoff’s Labour government that pioneered in Malta the idea of worker self-management in various state-funded enterprises. Introducing such a centre promoting a shift from traditional to a continental corporative industrial relations model was challenging. The idea was an innovative one for our university, with lectures mainly delivered in the native language and students having the chance to present their essays in Maltese as well. For the first time University doors opened for most adult workers giving them the opportunity to attend tertiary level education.

One of the centre’s fundamental objectives has always been that of providing education to workers, thus promoting the introduction and upholding local industrial democracy. The centre introduced a course leading to a diploma in labour studies that attracted and still attracts mainly union officials, blue and white-collar workers as well as people involved in human resource management.

The centre, managed by a small but dynamic team, mainly Prof. Edward L Zammit, Prof. Godfrey Baldachino and Mr Saviour Rizzo, is now known as the Centre for Labour Studies (CLS). Apart from supporting the development of workplace participation through education and consultancy, it regularly conducts research about the subject, seminars, issues publications and delivers comparative studies in the relevant EU institutions, among others.

Seminars and conferences are usually sponsored by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung foundation. The CLS currently offers four courses leading to a diploma in industrial relations; gender and development; occupational health and safety and in occupational guidance and career counselling respectively. The semesters are specially designed in a way to give respective participants the possibility to merge academic studies with their normal daily commitments.

Malta’s accession in the European Union brought about the amalgamation of continental flavoured industrial regulations in our legislation, thus increasing the importance of this discipline. For instance, recently-introduced laws as the worker involvement legal notice require constant industrial education among all those who are in some way involved in the employment world, especially workers.

It facilitates the integration of employees in the enterprise plans and these are more liable to understand and challenge change, as in the case of new work practices. Employers should trust more the consensual labour relations model and envisage it as an integral part of the enterprise. The state too is obliged to invest in this direction. It would be easier for any government to explain and eventually adopt certain social decisions affecting the labour market and society at large, once a healthy industrial democracy prevails.

Thanks to the experience gained in these last 25 years, the CLS role is an added value and it must be utilised to its full potential. There should be more investment in the centre, both financial and in its human resources. Its consultancy and objective research services must be fully exploited and reinforced, while diploma courses should be upgraded to masters degree levels.

Nevertheless such solutions should contribute to ensure continuity of the centre itself, while generating further interest in such a vital subject in today’s globalised economy, where industrial relations must be set on cooperative model rather than the traditional confrontational one.