The former editor of PN Sunday newspaper Il-Mument and the ex General Workers’ Union shop steward today were ordered by a court to pay former GWU secretary general Tony Zarb a total of €2,000.

Mr Zarb had instituted a libel against Victor Camilleri and Samuel Grech after he felt that an article published on 17 February 2013 entitled ‘The GWU works against the interests of its own workers’ was defamatory.

Mr Grech served as a GWU shop steward who represented former public bus service company Arriva workers.

Some time before the article had been published, Mr Grech resigned from the GWU and formed a union together with a number of Arriva bus drivers and eventually was also appointed president.

On 20 September, 2012, the Maritime and Aviation Division of the GWU signed an agreement with Arriva.

It resulted that when Mr Grech served as a shop steward he was involved in the discussions in relation to the above-mentioned agreement but when he resigned, he no longer participated.

Mr Grech is understood to have left the GWU because he did not agree with certain decisions in relation to the agreement, particularly the hourly rate offered to workers, which, in his opinion, was too low a rate.

He had also expressed his disagreement over the fact that bus drivers who damaged the bus they were driving would be given a warning by the bus company. In this regard, he felt that the GWU was not sticking up for the rights of Arriva’s workers.

When Mr Grech was interviewed by il-Mument, he had alleged that the union was holding secret discussions and the workers were not being informed on everything and on when the agreement would be signed.

Mr Grech said that he did not know the exact content of the agreement reached between Arriva and the GWU since he did not stay on as a GWU shop steward.

Mr Grech alleged that Mr Zarb and the GWU were working against the interests of its member workers and nothing in the contract was in favour of workers but the GWU still went ahead with the agreement.

The magistrate found that the editor of the newspaper failed to get the version of Mr Zarb while also stating that Mr Grech was not too convincing when he said that he hadn’t any information on the agreement which was eventually signed between the GWU and Arriva.

The magistrate therefore ordered Mr Camilleri to pay €200 and Mr Grech €1,800 to Mr Zarb.