All the Arriva drivers in Gozo without exception are smart with ties properly done up.

All the Arriva drivers in Malta, with very few exceptions, are tie-less and give a slovenly image to the bus company.

It’s one of two things: Either Arriva made a mistake when it introduced the tie regulation and allowed the General Workers’ Union to correct its mistake by ordering the drivers to work without a tie as an industrial action.

Or else Arriva is spine-less and has allowed GWU to issue such an order when there are no contentions between the two sides and the union should not be allowed to interfere with the ordinary running of the company, which also includes the important issue of the drivers’ appearance and uniform.

Or else the climate in Gozo is less hot than that of Malta.

Or the Malta workforce is heavily unionised while that in Gozo is non-unionised.

The bus company was very wrong to accept this imposition from the union when it could have never been interpreted as an industrial action. Transport Malta is quite right when it seeks to enforce the commitment of Arriva as to uniforms and appearance. It is quite sad that only Transport Malta saw fit to reply to the GWU but not Arriva itself, as if disagreeing with the union has become something unthinkable in today’s Malta.

We say, as we said last week, that by allowing this, Arriva has opened the door to the continuing and ongoing deterioration of the company’s service, the slope that will lead the bus service back to where it was in those bad old days of the yellow buses. Even the yellow buses, especially the new ones, had a clause in their agreement by means of which the government gave them more subsidies that said they had to have the air-conditioning unit on. That rule was unanimously broken and quietly forgotten as no enforcement was made. It was in such subtle manner that the service level of the system was allowed to deteriorate.

We now turn to comments made today week by Frans Ghirxi while he was ‘analysing’ the papers of the day on One TV’s breakfast show.

Mr Ghirxi let fly at this paper for having the temerity to criticise the union. He claimed, but did not prove, this paper is ‘against the workers’ and that its owners are against the workers’ rights.

That was a savage attack, which, coming from a former colleague, was quite uncalled for. Maybe Mr Ghirxi, who while editor of l-orizzont used to complain with one and all that he had been ordered by his principals, the GWU, to put anything done by Tony Zarb or by the union as meriting front page mention, thought that all papers are like that. Maybe he thought TMID’s owners are like the GWU owners.

He is as wrong as wrong can be. This paper’s owners never tell the paper to put them on the front page, as GWU told Mr Ghirxi. This paper’s owners never tell the editor to write this or that, as Mr Ghirxi’s former employers apparently did. This paper is Independent not just in name but also in substance.

And for all Mr Ghirxi’s bluster on One, he has not disproved the central contention of last week’s leader: That ordering the Arriva drivers not to wear ties could have never been interpreted as an industrial action and that a company’s uniform and internal regulations can never be part of an industrial action. That was undue interference in the running of the company and should have never been accepted by the company.