Editorial

What is it that makes the General Workers' Union jittery practically every summer? This summer is no exception as it has given the government until today to discuss its demand for alternative employment for workers now serving their notice at the government printing firm Interprint. The union has warned that if the government fails to do this, it would call nationwide action.

The country has now become so used to the kind of threats the GWU dishes out from time to time that it has almost become immune to them, with many addressing the union's own famous slogan of Issa daqshekk (Enough is enough) to the union itself. The union's latest stand, which essentially boils down to a blanket demand for the government to take on workers found redundant in companies it owns or controls, has been overwhelmingly seen as unreasonable and highly counter-productive.

Just at a time when the administration is making such a serious effort to streamline the service, a goal that has eluded so many administrations in the past, including Labour, in comes the GWU pressing the government to do just the opposite, that is, taking on workers when there is no need for them. The real issue now is not over the fate of the Interprint workers who have not accepted to take the termination package but over what should be regarded as the "non-principle" which the GWU is so valiantly fighting for this summer.

Judging by the overall reaction to the GWU's stand in the case of the Interprint workers, most analysts in the country today agree that the biggest problem facing the union is its own frame of mind. The union is fossilised in the past, moulded in an outmoded thinking and attitude that hark back to the times when it was fused to the Malta Labour Party.

Unlike other organisations that have moved with the times, the GWU appears to be finding it hard to remove its political shackles. It still freely resorts to inflammatory language, wrongly assuming perhaps that this enhances its militant streak and helps keep its membership strength intact. But does this really work today? Is this what its members really want? The truth, as seen by many, is that the union has become anachronistic.

Militant union delegates may well impress the leadership with their enthusiastic response to threats but silent union members in so many places of work are not all that amused, even if they too take part in public demonstrations of support, irrespective of whether or not they do this out of their own free will or simply because they may fear provoking the wrath of their union shop steward if they do not.

In this context, it would be interesting too to find out the real strength of the trade unions today. Yes, the figures are published in the annual returns of the registrar of trade unions but how well audited are the membership figures?

Calling nationwide action and taking members to the streets if the government does not give in to its threat by today will not help the situation at all. In fact, if the GWU were to be so unwise as to ignore all the calls for common sense made so far by so many, it would do great harm to the cause of its own members and of the rest of the workers in the country. Would that correspond to its role of a general workers' union? Hardly.