Prime Minister Joseph Muscat’s comment, that he prefers foreign workers to do menial jobs than Maltese workers, was an insult to human dignity, an insult to many Maltese married to foreigners and an insult to both Maltese and foreign workers themselves.
In the sweet month of May, after celebrating Worker’s Day on 1st May, Malta’s Socialist Prime Minister makes such a racist and classist statement! He has since apologised – which is good – but the fact that he made the statement in the first place speaks volumes about what is going on in his mind, what the emphasis of his government’s economic policy is and what his outlook on human work is – and that is not good at all.
The fact that he is building an economy based on differences of human race and differences of human labour and an economy based on cheap labour is not good at all. We should be priding ourselves on our equality of personhood but the importation of huge amounts of cheap labour is cheapening everybody’s outlook on the economy.
He has chosen to lower the value-added to our economy in order to cheapen human labour with the result that everybody is being negatively affected except maybe the developers. Cheap labour means that Maltese workers at any level – but especially at the lower end of the skills market – are being forced to lower the fees for their work with the result that they are ending up being paid, or are forwarding quotes, which are much lower than what they would normally want to ask for the work they do compared to the average standard of living.
Of course this is good for inflation but it is not good for the dignity of the labourer in his/her respective trade and creates work entrapment with low wages. It is not good for the housing social market because it is creating a severe stress on our housing resources – for sale or for rent – in such a way that the rise in prices is affecting the man in the street’s capacity to access affordable housing, if it can be accessed at all.
It is not good for our pensions either, contrary to what the PM stated earlier, because an economy based on cheap labour cannot improve the pension critical mass made from social security payments, if these latter payments from which the pension fund is drawn are being pushed towards lower social security contributions rather than towards higher value-added at the higher end of the labour market.
In simple terms, we all get our pensions from the social security payments we make. We all know that there is a range of payments per week, ranging from the lowest social security payment per week with the lowest paid jobs to the highest payment per week on the higher side of the scale. It would make more sense to increase the pension fund and therefore secure our pensions, by employing more people at the higher end of the wage scale to pay higher social security payments than those at the lower end of the payment scale, with the result that the net social security payments would be less than they can be.
In other words one should aim at the higher end of the employment market rather than the lower one for better economics, so-called better value-added! That this government is doing the exact opposite shows that what the PM expressed in not so many words is being put into this government’s daily practice and this is not a bonus for the Maltese population. That the government’s so called passport sale scheme does not address this anomaly is obvious, because all that this is doing is pushing up the rental market for the man in the street but otherwise there is no increased social security contribution attached to this scheme.
The PM’s attitude to rubbish waste is also misplaced. Rubbish is the new gold rush, a new resource if handled properly. Properly addressed, there is a fortune to be made by properly handling people’s rubbish and many Maltese and foreigners work in this flourishing sector. There is money to be made in the collection of waste, money to be made in the separation of waste, money to be made in the recycling of waste and money to be made in the controlled and planned disposal of waste!
So I do not really know what the PM was railing about! I would not mind working and dealing with waste management – a job which his government seems to look down upon –provided, of course, that I was properly paid! But what bothered me immensely was not the economics of the financial aspects of the PM’s statement but the economics of the lack of human dignity and freedom so marked by the approach in his government. It is also manifestly unchristian. Man is free but everywhere is in chains! Man does not live on bread alone but needs human dignity and personal fulfilment in the work one does. Man was created by God ut operantur! He was asked to work prior to the fall because, through work, man was not asked to be a slave but a co-operator with the creator, a dignity akin to the image and likeness of God.
J.R.R. Tolkien once hit on the concept of “sub-creation”, where the fruits of human labour are manifest precisely in that dimension of resemblance where man embellishes or completes the universe. The Lord of the Rings is an example of his sub-creation where this new reality collaborates with God’s power to embellish the universe. So work is anything but tedious, and when it becomes so, when it becomes a weight, it is because we have lost touch with the original intention of work.
Many contemporaries condemn themselves to five days of suffering and two days of fleeting enjoyment at the weekend, as the grey monotony of the next Monday appears on the horizon, or to the monotonous existence of shift work. In the Christian view of the world, work is born of love, is a manifestation of love and is directed towards love. Josemaria Escriva clearly states that work is, in fact, a path to sanctity since the great proportion of our everyday existence is taken up with the task of work.
For 30 years, Christ himself carried out manual labour in Joseph’s workshop and this work was just as much a work of human redemption as the three years of public life! Work is also a way of exercising the virtues, such as fortitude to avoid anxiety, temperance to spend ourselves unselfishly, justice to fulfil our duties towards God, society, our families and fellow workers and finally prudence to know in each case what course to take.
Today, when chasing success at any cost is so fashionable, success and failures take on a new dimension if we are seeking primarily the above ends. Work is a means not an end and sometimes workplace structures impede this outlook. Absurd schedules make it impossible to spend time with the family or friends or to help the needy.
Companies often make exaggerated demands in search of an excellence that amounts to arrogance, turning the hierarchy of values on its head. Many work environments encourage an excessive competitiveness that routinely leads to a lack of charity and forgetting that professional interests are only a means to an end. Often these systems push people to devote all their energies to their work, neglecting other dimensions of their lives, pushing people to become workaholics and forgoing necessary rest and recuperation of health!
The Prime Minister’s statement flies in the face of all this and quite clearly paints his government’s attitude to work as one of enslavement – a new enslavement that may only be escaped by licking the boots of those in power, hoping for some hand me down, get-rich-quick scheme or some membership of a board with high end benefits.
The concept of freedom and personal empowerment has been turned on its head. It is who you know not what you know again. It is opportunities for the blue-eyed boys again. It is a period of vice-is-best again. It is a period of non-enforcement of laws again. It is a period where human dignity is again exchanged for the price of money where man is forced to live on bread alone! Reality lies elsewhere!
Dr Michael Asciak MD, M.Phil, PhD
60, Triq L-Akkwedott
Birkirkara