So Mr Alfred Mifsud does not agree with the decision as to who floored the Drydocks and thinks that Minister Austin Gatt and the Government has lost it as far as the failure of the shipyards is concerned How wrong you are, Mr Mifsud. Perhaps you would like to know why this failure came about from one who was there from the Bailey days right through until my retirement in 1984. In a few words, the Yard was defeated by the failure of the leaders of the Metalworkers Section of the GWU to accept changes to improve productivity and time-keeping and by the militant Labour Party employees who took charge of the Yard when the Labour Government, under Prime Minister Dom Mintoff, was in power

Damage to the Drydocks

Now, with privatisation completed, perhaps it is worth recalling some of the damage done by the Malta Labour Party during those dark days when, in cohorts with the GWU, they brought the Yard to a standstill for seven months with industrial action called by the late Lorry Sant in November of 1970. At that time I was Personnel Manager during the Swan Hunter Managing era and, if I remember rightly, this came about when the PN Government refused to sanction Swan Hunter’s intention of giving way to a four per cent wage increase to the industrial workers made by the GWU.

But let us go back to the start of the commerialisation of the former Admiralty dockyard with the arrival in 1959 of Bailey Ltd, a small Welsh Shipyard in Barry, who were saddled with some 6,000 employees, handed over from the Admiralty with the task of “commercialising” the Yard. They arrived having signed an agreement that there would be no redundancies except for natural wastage (retirement/death) but at the same time some 150-200 apprentices had to be taken on each year. Of course, the late Lorry Sant, then the up-and-coming Secretary of the Metalworkers Section and future Minister in the Mintoff Government of 1971, was in his element, having just taken over from my friend and colleague the late Carmel Debono.

Short-lived Bailey reign

With the industrial problems arising during the short-lived Bailey reign, 1963 saw the departure of Bailey (Malta) Ltd. Bailey’s had tried hard enough but they could not overcome their industrial relations problems faced with the militant GWU. As a result, they departed under a cloud. The arrival of the large well-known north-east England shipbuilding and ship repair firms of Swan Hunter and Wigham Richardson seemed a promising era. Then Prime Minister George Borg Olivier appointed the Management of Administration, chaired by Sir Eric Milbourne.

A good start was made when, in order to continue trying to fully employ the 6,000 men and women in the Yard, a double shift system was introduced. This gave management the great opportunity to promote two sets of intermediate members of Maltese into grades never before available to Maltese tradesmen – departmental managers, foremen and other top managers. But the the Suez crisis in the Middle East, resulting in oil tankers bypassing the Mediterra-nean, meant that the double shift system had to go. However, the end of the line for Swan Hunter was the seven-month period of industrial action and the ban on overtime that was so well- orchestrated by the Metal-workers Section in late 1970.

I say “well-orchestrated” because the men were not sent out on strike but certain pockets of emergency work, say crane drivers, workers in the pumping stations, skilled labourers who would normally working on the floating of vessels in and out of .the docks, would be called out on strike. The result was that no vessels were able to enter the Docks, thus bringing repair work in the Yard to a standstill. In this way, only a few workers would be losing wages for a short time while the rest of the industrials would be paid a full day’s wages for doing nothing!

The aim of the MLP:GWU tandem was successful because as soon as the MLP came to power, the wage claim was accepted, the industrials went back to normal work – or went on “waiting time”. The irony of all this was that the members of the Executive and Senior Staff and Departmental Managers, who also had a salary claim, and who were roped in for night duty in the pumping stations to cover for those industrials who were not working overtime in these emergency stations, never got anything for their emergency work during the industrial strife. And their salary claim was turned down!

Workers participation introduced

With the departure of Swan Hunter, and with the MLP now in power, came the running of the Yard firstly by a joint GWU-Government-appointed Council, I believe headed by then GWU general-secretary, the late George Agius, and later by successive eight-member Boards elected by the workers who then elected a chairman from their midst.

To be fair, both Franz Spiteri and later Sammy Mejlak did good work as board chairmen but, of course, it was government and the militant shop floor workers who were in complete control of the workforce. We in management were at the mercy of the Council and the newly-formed Departmental Workers Committees, whose representatives even attended every interview board when promotions were made.

The management pyramid was reversed, with policy starting on the shop floor, passing up to the board for confirmation and then management being the last to know. That was the time when if some policy proved successful the elected board got the credit, but when things went wrong it was management that got the blame!

That was the time when the late Nationalist Fortu Selvatico was elected to the board with the highest number of votes but was unable to enter the Yard to carry out his duties for fear of being beaten up by the Labour Party diehards.

Wages frozen, salaries reduced

Those were the days when Prime Minister Mintoff froze wages and reduced salaries and when, addressing the yard workers in Gavina Gulia Square outside the Dockyard gates, he vulgarly called us all (apart from the female employees, I always presumed?) bla bocci tal-laham”, in other words a bunch of eunuchs. But what he did not do was tell his followers to give up their coffee break at the start of work and the walking times at the end of the day so that the workforce was waiting at their clocking station at least five minutes before the hooter sounded. We were lucky to get four hours work from an eight-hour day. Those were the days when wages were frozen, managers’ salaries reduced and overtime replaced by time-in-lieu – which never came – and the was GWU toothless and powerless. Mr Mifsud mentions that one year (I believe 1981) the yards made a profit – it was a time when we did not have a chief accountant and we got a Christmas bonus. The industrials got Lm5, a plastic shoulder bag and two hand towels; the senior staff got a slim plastic briefcase – and the two hand towels – which probably came all the way from China!

German managing director

Those were the days when Mr Mintoff produced a German national as managing director of the Yard. This at a time when we had an excellent Maltese general manager – the late John Calleja, and when we were told “the Dockyard is Maltese, for the Maltese and run by the Maltese!” But there we were, with the

former Kiel Naval Dockyard general manager German Admiral Otto Fenselau, assisted by another German Ekhart Sulhe, to run the show as managing director of Malta Drydocks. I do not remember that he did very much for the benefit of the shipyard or to introduce anything to make the enterprise more viable.

It is difficult to understand why the government of the day decided to set up the “White Elephant” shipbuilding yard at the Marsa at a time when shipbuilding was at its lowest ebb. It is equally difficult to understand why the Education Minister of the day decided to introduce the Trade Trainee Scheme as future Shipyard workers, with the first group made up of lads of 14-15 years of age, some of whom had left school unable to read and write but, of course, added to the payroll.

This was the time too when the GWU lost some of its top men: the late Joe Attard Kingswell and Mike Seychell and Anglu Fenech, true trade unionists.

Malta must now accept the privatisation of the shipyards. But for Mr Alfred Mifsud to say that Minister Austin Gatt and the Government had “lost it” is unacceptable to those who worked in the Yard throughout the period I have

mentioned.

In my 25 years in Dockyard Management, until my retirement in 1984, there is no doubt that the excellent workforce was at the mercy of politics and mainly the militant Metalworkers Section of the GWU.

Now the end of the line has been reached.

Stanley J A Clews

Sliema

(Stanley Clews has recently published his memoirs covering fully his experiences in the Dockyard between 1959 and 1984 when he retired as personnel and administration manager)