The General Workers’ Union is in the process of examining the legal and industrial action to be applied to the case of the Crowne Plaza hotel staff, after they turned up to work for their new employers on 8 January only to have heavy construction work imposed upon them.
The new owners have grouped the hotel’s staff into teams of builders and painters, plumbers and carpenters, electricians, seamstresses and security guards. So far, the GWU explained, some 10 workers have been injured while undertaking dangerous work without any training, experience, supervision or even proper safety equipment.
The Occupation Health and Safety Authority is also investigating the situation, according to GWU hospitality and foods section secretary Josef Bugeja.
The 100-odd employees, many of whom are qualified and highly experienced in the tourism industry, and who had been assured that the site’s new owners would be retaining them once it was handed over by the government, are now engaged in various forms of manual labour such as dangerous demolition and construction work. One particularly gruelling and dangerous job detail involved the demolition of four storeys of ceilings in order to make way for a new staircase and lift shaft.
Employees who had served individually in capacities such as restaurant managers, head chefs, duty managers, stewards and supervisors, head waiters and sous-chefs have now been turned to gruelling manual labour. Other workers, meanwhile, have been exported to work at other construction sites being developed by the company.
Owned by the government up until December, the Crowne Plaza had been leased to, and run, by Air Malta through its subsidiary Tigne Development Company Ltd. The site is currently on promise of sale to a private developer, Imperial Point Co. Ltd, on condition that the workers will be retained.
The promise of sale agreement elapses on 31 March, which means that the hotel workers are still technically Air Malta employees.
The union has called a meeting with the airline to discuss the situation. The union also held its second official meeting with the site’s new owner, George Muscat, but it is still awaiting a full employment plan to be presented by the new owners.
Mr Bugeja yesterday described the state of affairs as ”absolutely unacceptable” in that the employees had only agreed to carry out temporary refurbishment work but have now had heavy and dangerous construction work imposed upon them.
The GWU also questioned the type of work the employees would be given in future, considering the fact that a three-star hotel to be established at the site, and which is expected to open on 31 March, will only be employing some 40 staff.
The new owners, Mr Bugeja added, have guaranteed continued employment for the staff, but have not guaranteed that they would be doing the same jobs as before, which the new owners would have to provide as per their contractual obligations.