Is it the summer heat or is that Tony Zarb making me sick? The country was in suspense – well, those who knew or cared about the consequences, at least – about what would happen at ST Microelectronics when employees vetoed the rescue package negotiated between the corporation and the government. Now Zarb pops out of the woodwork like a jelly baby in a bad suit to claim that he has saved the day because employees have voted in favour of a renegotiated package.
Who does he think he is kidding? For a moment there, it looked like those ST Microelectronics employees were going to self-sabotage and take the country with them, aided and abetted by their General Workers Union.
Take the country with them, I hear you ask? Yes, of course: what happens at ST Microelectronics happens to us all. The impact of 1,500 people being made jobless overnight will put cracks in the entire economy. Whether you sell cars, food or advertising, that kind of instant surge in unemployment will hit you hard. But there’s worse: remove ST Microelectronics’ export value from the equation, and Malta’s balance of trade is thrown right off kilter.
That’s why, I imagine, the government bent over backwards to persuade the corporation to keep its Malta operation going, using the best means of persuasion known to man: the profit motive. Neither the Prime Minister nor the Finance Minister can have been getting much sleep, preparing for Plan B: announce to the country that ST Microelectronics are packing up and leaving, with a nice big recession as a parting gift.
And that’s why the General Workers Union and its members were so wrong to use that kind of brinkmanship in what was, essentially, a zero-sum game. ST held all the cards. They had and still have nothing to lose. There’s not much leverage the other party can use in those circumstances. You have to use something else, something that it is not in the General Workers Union’s power to use because the GWU is not the government or the Finance Ministry.
Tony Zarb boasted yesterday that because of his efforts, employees at ST will lose “€250 over two years” instead of “€2,000 a year”. At the point I am writing this, we have only his word on it so far. What he did fail to point out during his ‘extraordinary general conference’ yesterday morning was just how much we all stood to lose if his brinkmanship had blown up in his jolly face. Taking a bit of a risk there, wasn’t he?
Zarb told the people who gathered to listen to him yesterday that his union’s principles are not for sale. “Methods change over the years but our principles do not,” he said. And these principles would be….what exactly? It would be nice if he were to elaborate and whip me out of the dark. From where I’m standing, it looks like a case of everyone’s methods changing over the years, because flexibility is essential to survival, but the GWU’s methods staying the same, and principles be damned.
Whether they’re dealing with an international conglomerate threatening to pull out of Malta, taking its export value and leaving behind a surge in unemployment, a whacked-out balance of trade and a recession, or dealing with a workshop that’s got 20 employees on the payroll, the union’s approach is the same: blinkered and short-termist.
It was entirely fitting that Zarb paid tribute to Sammy Meilaq when he rounded off his self-congratulatory epistle, describing him as “a special friend”. Oh, why am I not surprised? It was just unfortunate that he happened to do so immediately after telling us that the GWU’s methods haven’t changed. That’s right: they’re still those of Sammy Meilaq.
Mamma mia, it’s Jason and Sandro
The head cheese at Super One and Sandro Chetcuti, facing trial for the attempted murder of yet another union leader, ate lunch a deux yesterday. They were in very close conversation. You’d think that the only way that Jason Micallef gets into his fabled white jeans is by staying off the carbs, but apparently not.
While we’re on the subject, this is what I think about Manwel Mallia’s attempts at discrediting Anthony Samuel, a consultant at the general hospital who examined Vince Farrugia and reported on his injuries, testifying in court a couple of days ago as to what those injuries were. There are two of the three drivers of Labour’s Business Forum, one of them in the dock for attempted murder and the other defending him, and they question the credibility of others. They really do need a big mirror.
Perhaps Manwel Mallia has been mired in other people’s muck for so long as a criminal lawyer that he is no longer able to distinguish between serious misconduct that would have a consultant brought before his peers for discipline and a bit of ‘u ejja, mhux xorta’ to help a friend.
He actually had the nerve to ask Samuel – in that archaic criminal lawyer fashion which suggests that he had indeed done so – whether he had inflated and exaggerated Farrugia’s injuries as a favour to his friends, Farrugia’s son and daughter. Mallia appears not to understand just how serious a slur this is. And in terms of credibility, it is akin to Anglu Farrugia’s ‘PN agents bought Labour votes’. Mallia is spending far too much time with those people.
What next – is he now going to ask Vince Farrugia whether he cracked his own ribs to get at Sandro Chetcuti, or suggest that Farrugia rolled on the floor shouting ‘Ahhh! Ahhh!’ while Chetcuti sat five feet away in an easy-chair? You know, like children do when they want to get back at a sibling, pretending to be hit so that mummy rushes into the room and the other child gets the blame?
Mallia should stick to wearing red stretchy outfits and interesting spectacles at Labour Business Forum fundraisers. His glory days as a criminal lawyer are over if this is the best he can do.
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