From Mr S. J. A. Clews

Would-be politician Josie Muscat seems to blame our present Prime Minister when he describes the privatisation of the shipyard as the “death and burial” of Malta’s once 6,000 strong Malta Drydocks. He goes on to look back and says that the present crises (sic) have been brought about by the present government’s inefficiency and lack of drive. And then, patronisingly, the good doctor gives his wrong version of the history of Malta Drydocks and why it has become necessary to privatise the shipyard.

Starting off with the 1959 commercialisation of the then admiralty dockyard by Bailey when I first joined as welfare officer, Dr Muscat says that Bailey took the ’yard to the brink of total bankruptcy. Wrong, Baileys was kicked out by Borg Olivier for trying to feather its own nest back in Wales. To be fair, it was never given a chance by the militant GWU Metalworkers Section led by the late Lorry Sant, who refused to change old admiralty working practices. In 1963, the Borg Olivier government appointed a Council of Administration under the chairmanship of Sir Eric Millbourne, which in turn appointed Swan Hunter and Wigham Richardson as managing agents.

Dr Muscat is partially correct when he says that those were the best days since commercialisation. By that time I had become Personnel Manager; it was a time when the double shift was introduced, when we were able to promote Maltese to middle management for the first time. True we were hit by the Suez crisis but overcame that up to a point with work round the clock. However, the GWU failed to accept management’s proposals to change the bad work practices inherited from the admiralty days – for instance, a 20-minute break at the start of the day (yes, at the start!) and walking times allowed to go to the job and walking time to the clocking off station at the end of day. We were lucky if we got four hours productivity from an eight-hour day.

Dr Muscat does not mention the seven-month ban on overtime that brought the ’yard to a standstill until the 1971 Labour government came to power, terminated the Swan Hunter contract and informed the dockyard workers (managers are workers let me emphasise) publicly in Gavina Gulia Square that we were a bunch of eunuchs! That not being enough, wages were frozen and management salaries reduced. And not a word of protest from the GWU.

As if that was not enough, the ’yard was saddled by that white elephant of a shipbuilding ’yard and the dockyard itself was given 200 lads, without any schooling, as so-called “trade trainees”. These 15- and 16-year-olds were meant for the shipbuilding complex but some of them could not even read or write.

With the departure of Swan Hunter came an ex-Admiral of the wartime German Navy as managing director with the board composed of government appointed members (including GWU representatives), followed by an elected board from the work force. But the bad working practices remained; the workforce remained in the region of 5,000 and productivity remained low.

With the introduction of workers’ participation, it seemed that a solution might have been found. But, in spite of the efforts of a chairman like Franz Spiteri, it proved a failure when the position of the board members depended on the votes of the workforce, who of course were also members of the GWU and members of the Labour Party. The late Nationalist Furtu Selvatico was once elected to the board but at one time he was not allowed to enter the ’yard by the rabble and was beaten up for his efforts!

Josie Muscat should know that the political meddling in the ’yard started from the very beginning when Baileys took over the ’yard in 1959. The GWU could have saved the ’yard way back in the Swan Hunter days if they had backed management’s proposals to insist on productivity being tied to “giving a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay”. But the metalworkers section of the GWU resisted all efforts right to the very end even when the workforce was reduced, even when the red lights of closure were flashing in recent years.

Now privatisation seems to be the only answer, provided the new owners retain those excellent skilled tradesmen still at the shipyard. It augurs well for the future now that the government and the General Workers Union appear to have reached agreement on the future of the remaining workers and their families.

Stanley J. A. Clews

SLIEMA