Precipitate?

No matter how the stand off between unions, the government and employers ends, the whole saga will count as a remarkable waste of time and effort. Losing so much time focusing on the vacation of employees as if it were the be-all and end-all of our endeavour as a nation to achieve competitiveness is clearly nonsense. Whoever prodded or advised the government to follow this route clearly needs to be given the order of the boot, on the same lines as for those other advisers who pushed for the Dar Malta folly in Brussels.

I have read the "technical" paper which apparently convinced the government that it makes sense to look at competitiveness improvements from the perspective of working days per year. It is a disaster. Whoever drafted it needs to be sent back to school to relearn basic econometric theory. Yet he/she has convinced Dr Gonzi to make the curtailment of leave the spearhead of competitiveness im-provements. No doubt that same adviser or advisers spent some time helping the government to rubbish the package of proposals I put forward last month to respond over the short to medium term to the economic crisis we face.

What I cannot understand is how and why employers also have fallen for the same gambit. I have had industrialists and other businessmen come tell me they do not need so much polemics about working days for, whatever happens, the strife and resentment that the whole matter could generate will be counterproductive in terms of the output they will get from employees. And I believe them.

Yet, the Gonzi government has persisted with its strategy of reducing holidays. These are the same "days of rest" that the Nationalist Party and Dr Gonzi once boasted they were returning to the poor Maltese workers who had been "robbed" of them by a pernicious socialist government. Clearly the present administration feels that once it declared its decision on workers' leave in the budget for 2005 it should stick to it. Politically, it considers that to remain credible as a government its word should stand, no matter how much people resist. After all, in Parliament unlike Labour in 1996-1998, the Gonzi administration enjoys a five-seat majority, partly due to gerrymandering. So why appear "weak"?

Once again, anybody who believes that the way to economic recovery lies through the curtailment of leave, must be living far away from the reality known to most managers and workers. I still have to discover an investment that did not materialise because of the holiday schedule for the Maltese, long as it is (but other countries have the so-called 13- and 14-month extra payments to workers for holidays taken...). And I still have not met a businessman who confessed that the reason he was closing down his enterprise was attributable to the long leave and holiday sessions indulged in by the Maltese.

By contrast, I have been given the following reasons, among others, for people deciding not to invest or to disinvest: bureaucratic delays within the government system, from the Office of the Prime Minister down to Malta Enterprise and Mepa; lack of a clear and coherent policy on this or that; the introduction and/or removal of levies and of so-called eco taxes; corruption and influence peddling; inflexible trade union and government practices (not related to annual leave entitlements); high and arbitrary tax levels; political interference and lack of policy coordination among ministers and ministries; unavailability of factory/office space; unavailability of properly trained human resources; unreliable business partners in Malta itself; private and public promises that were long on good hope, short on delivery.

So if, by focusing on the curtailment of workers' leave, the Gonzi administration wishes to project the image that it is trying to correct the problems accumulated by successive Gonzi/Fenech Adami administrations, well it might get the image but it will still be far away from the reality. Meanwhile, people are living their lives completely cut off from the concerns the government tries to present as central to the well-being of the nation.

As part of my work, I meet many people in their homes and places of work. What they say amounts to a picture of total disconnection... between what families are experiencing in their daily lives and what the government wants to make us believe... People talk about lack of work, about problems to make ends meet, about the hardships they face as pensioners, about environmental neglect, about injustices they suffer just because they are perceived as Labour or even if they are PN orientated, because they want things done properly...

Which is why Labour's decision to hold a national protest this Sunday on the Granaries makes sense. Giving a signal from the streets that things are not going well, despite the official hype, so that ordinary people can show their distress, is an essential part of the democratic process. We have invited all sectors of the population to attend and show in a civil but determined way their dissatisfaction with the state we're in. There come times when political activities can bring together people of different persuasions because the situation calls for it.

This is such a time. The focus on workers' leave as if it is the root cause of our ills signals that the government does not have a coherent strategy for economic recovery. Some argue that the Gonzi administration has been precipitate in taking this route. That might be a charitable explanation for why we are being driven into this rut, but it is hardly convincing.