His and hers

The news that the GWU-owned Cargo Handling Co. Ltd has lost a court case instituted by three female clerks who were being excluded from the overtime roster applicable to male clerks of the same grade should take the cake. The court sentence held that the "reasons" put forward by Cargo Handling to try to justify this manifest discrimination were neither plausible nor tenable.

Over ten years have passed since the Constitution was amended to provide for protection against discrimination on grounds of sex, but this Constitutional safeguard can be resorted to only when the State commits such discrimination. The ban on gender discrimination in the workplace has now been introduced also in our labour laws and therefore it is also unlawful for a private employer to discriminate between male and female employees.

But laws are there to be broken and the country's judicial system is there to rectify things when laws are broken. The legal aspect of this particular case must be of some academic interest, but this is not the point I wish to make.

The fact that the company that has blatantly discriminated between its employees for reasons of gender is owned by Malta's largest trade union is what should strike everybody most. Like any other serious organisation, the GWU is expected to practise what it preaches and I am sure that the GWU in theory does not agree with gender discrimination at the place of work. The GWU claims that the defence of workers' rights and conditions of work are its sole raison d'être.

I personally know several prominent GWU officials (past and present) who are most sincere in this basic belief and I admire them for it, even if the GWU makes my blood boil when it brazenly uses its clout for ulterior (read party political) motives. Internal games of jockeying for positions apart, I have no doubt that the big majority are sincere in their motives.

In practice, however, the GWU has allowed one of the companies it owns to discriminate in this way and this should have shocked most GWU officials more than it has shocked me. Yet every GWU official seems to have meekly accepted this as if it was just another of those hitches (or is it hiccups?) that every organisation must encounter every now and then. Quite odd, I would think.

This raises an interesting question. Does this mean that the GWU behaves as if its employees - whether employed directly or indirectly - do not enjoy the same rights as those enjoyed by others?

Strange as it seems, this notion is not far-fetched. The GWU already adopts different stances with regard to its members' rights, depending on whether they are employees in the public sector or in the private sector. When a private company is in financial difficulties, the GWU accepts discharges and/or reduced hours of work. When a government-owned company is for all intents and purposes financially (and morally) bankrupt, the GWU not only refuses to accept any discharges but also demands wage increases over and above the normal cost-of-living increases.

This is clearly seen from the stances publicly adopted by the GWU in the case of its members working - or perhaps just receiving a wage without necessarily working - at the Drydocks and at PBS. Obviously, the GWU uses two weights and two measures according to whether its members are public- or private-sector employees.

Is there, however a third category of employees in the GWU's way of looking at things? Cargo Handling employees are victims of discriminatory treatment. Union Print employees have no chance of being given wage increases other than the obligatory cost-of-living increases and Ritescan employees face the possibility of losing their job without any qualms on the part of their employer. There is no denying these facts that all indicate that the GWU is a bad employer.

I do not know what is the number of people employed by the GWU directly or indirectly through various companies in which it has a majority shareholding or full ownership. Perhaps this qualifies the GWU to become a member of the Employers' Association.

Incredibly, and ludicrously, the GWU expects these employees to be members of one of its sections. So the GWU takes on the responsibility of representing these workers' interests when there is a clash with their employer - the GWU itself.

According to what was revealed in the court case against Cargo Handling, the GWU section secretary representing the workers wrote to the managing director of the company about the issue. This 'plea' was ignored and the three employees had to resort to the court action. Was the service given by the GWU section to these three of its members simply a perfunctory lip service? Or did the managing director of the GWU subsidiary feel that it was not in the interests of the company to accommodate the claim, and, moreover, did not feel in any way obliged to be loyal to the sacred principles that his 'boss' publicly professes? Will anybody - from one side or the other - be held accountable for this shameful and embarrassing episode in the union's history?

The conflict of interest is obvious, but the GWU plods on relentlessly.