On the face of it, the ‘directive’ announced in all pomp on the steps of Castille by the 11 unions (The Association of Air Engineers, The Pilots’ Association, the General Workers Union, the Malta Union of Nurses and Midwives, the Malta Union of Teachers, the Union of Cabin Crew, The Central Bank Employees union, the academic staff union at the university, the Mepa Professionals union, the Union of Architects and Engineers in the Public Service, and the Mepa technicians and clerical workers union) is a rather tame ‘directive’ after all the hustle and bustle of the past weeks – just delay paying your water and electricity bills till the last day.
No keep back part of the payment directive, nor pay it in instalments, no do not pay for the surcharge, nor other tactics to strong-arm Enemalta into bowing to popular demand and the government into intervening between the cost price and the selling price. Maybe, maybe, those are pleasures yet to come.
The problem, as we see it, lies in the format adopted: they were, yesterdays L-Orizzont told us, ‘directives to the people’. Come again. Not directives to the members, which given the unions involved would have amounted to so much, and then again, not so much (even assuming the union’s declared membership as appears in these days in the annual statement by the union registrar, blithely including the pensions’ sections and allowing figures to go unchecked). But directives to the people, in which the union leaders standing on the Castille steps have as much authority as you and me, even without going to stand there. Anybody, and everybody, in this sense has the right to issue ‘directives to the people’.
The unions have their rightful place inside the Malta Council for Economic and Social Development and there the question of the rates overtook that on the Budget for weeks and months last year. One understands the position adopted by the unions (not just the 11 unions) against the proposed rates increases. There were other issues involved, such as the capping procedure and principle. At the end, the government stuck to its adopted principle – that the consumer must pay for what is imported at the cost it is imported. And the rates were duly published and started to be operational, bar a minor detail which required rectification.
The matter seemed final – but not to the 11 unions, who continued to insist on another meeting with the Prime Minister, making various noises of increased agitation and mass protest. The ‘directive’ is thus the first step.
Apart from the issue that unions either do not have a right to issue ‘directives’ to the people, or at least they have the same right as any other citizen, one must also ask if these are industrial directives since they are issued by the unions. If so, they must conform to the industrial relations law and they do not. There is no industrial dispute in question between the unions and Enemalta. The present law expressly prohibits sympathy strikes or industrial actions, and cleverly the ‘directives’ are neither.
What would normally happen if Citizen A were to urge the public to refrain from paying for an object of wide consumption until the very last moment? Quite possibly, that citizen could be taken to court for creating hindrances to the normal operations of that company. We are not asking for similar steps to be taken against the unions, but the Enemalta chairman was yesterday quoted in the press as saying that such a directive would create massive havoc with Enemalta’s cash flow. What would be the impact of a cash-flow crisis on the Enemalta employees, or are the unions expecting the government to bail out Enemalta once again? And, given the thrust of the union’s protest is what they claim is an ‘unfeeling’ government, why then the action against the utility?
The is surely one who will surely be a prime victim of this ‘directive’ – and that is the normal consumer, especially those on the lower wage ranges the unions declaim they are defending. As anyone can attest, for such CD levels, payment deferred most times means payment skipped, which later will become higher and higher levels of debts. People at this level will find it difficult to pay the kind of bills they are getting. Giving them the permission to defer payments by 45 days actually does them no good at all, but on the contrary, helps them live in a fools’ paradise for a further month and a half. And what if by then they would not have saved up the money. Or spent it on something else?
The union officials have protected jobs. On the one hand, they had to do something so as not to lose public face. But they must also realize they are in quite a different situation not just from their members, who, to be members, are employed, but also from the rest of the people they directed their ‘directive’ at: these do not have privileged and protected jobs, especially in the current world-wide economic climate. By making out they are the protectors of the weak and downtrodden, the union leaders have pushed their charges nearer and nearer to the cliff-edge where deferred payments swiftly become debts and debts become weights that no one can help them carry.
All through the past month the unions kept insisting the issue is not settled, when it was. This 45-day ‘directive’ again gives the impression the issue could be re-opened again. The government must make it clear that the next time the rates and surcharge are looked at again is when the next hedging and purchase of oil is made, at which time we all wish the oil price would have remained as low as it is. But for a government to bend down before a ‘directive’ announced on the prime minister’s doorstep would be a sign of weakness that would bring in more and more ‘directives’ and impositions.