Delegates and shop stewards of the GWU’s Metal and Construction Section have declared they no longer have confidence in Malta Shipyards chairman John Cassar White and will therefore not recognise him as their chairman, because of “what is happening at the shipyard”.

Their decision was approved in a resolution passed at a meeting which the union section called to inform them about various cases over which the union is in contestation with the Malta Shipyards management.

The union said, in listing points from the resolution, that the shipyard had not issued a job number to repair work costing tens of thousands of liri and that the shipyard had to make good for poor work done by a contractor. This was irregular to do, the section said, but the management was still maintaining it was right to do so. The section has informed the shipyard’s external auditors, Diamantino and Manfre, of this.

The resolution also says that no worker was believing what the executive management had said about the termination of the production executive’s contract. The media release the section issued about the resolution does not give more details on this. It goes on to refer to Gozo Channel-Malta Maritime Authority ramps and says that the shipyard management was standing by its position that a company carrying out the work should not itself draw up the designs.

The management, the resolution adds, was also maintaining that it was right to pass the design work to an individual who was employed at the shipyard, to do it privately.

This individual was employed at the shipyard to draw designs and the shipyard had sent him to Spain to specialise in this.

The resolution also says that the management was still insisting that scaffolding work should be given out on contract, when the contractor was not only not financially responsible but was paid more the longer the work took and the more workers he used.

On another issue which is not fully explained, the resolution expresses disapproval at the management saying that “the enquiry” conducted by the human resources executive and the company’s legal adviser was external, not internal, but then was not replying in writing to questions the union was asking about service agencies.

In the light of all this, the resolution says, the delegates and worker-elected representatives declared they did not have confidence in Mr Cassar White and therefore did not recognise him any longer as their chairman.