Sea malta employees, who are likely to end up without a job on December 13 as a result of the GWU's refusal to give its go-ahead for the company's sale to the Grimaldi Group, are claiming that the union owes them their livelihood and should make good for their wages, as the union had initially done with former Hotel Phoenicia workers.
"This blunder is a mirror image of the Phoenicia affair, when the union refused to budge in industrial action and the hotel was closed," a number of workers said. "We are tasting the first result of militancy from the General Workers' Union.
"This is actually similar to what the union achieved when Geitu Mercieca was section secretary and was stubborn in the Interprint case. It too was closed down and workers lost their jobs; now it is our turn."
The workers have sought legal advice and are considering suing the union, arguing that the majority of workers were in favour of the Sea Malta deal and the union should have acted as it always did, and put all workers in the same basket, rather than make a distinction between shore-based workers and seafarers," the workers said.
The workers said there were other technical issues they were considering in their prospective legal action. "But we don't want to divulge our strategy," they said.
A number of workers are also threatening to resign from the union. Some have mooted the idea of forming a house union while others are arguing they should join the Union Haddiema Maghqudin. But the workers are debating the issue because they fear that, by leaving the union, they would lose what they see as their right to compensation from the GWU.
The workers are also sceptical that the new shipping company being set up by Atlantica SpA, a subsidiary of the Grimaldi Group, would offer them a job.
"If we are offered a job, it will now be on their new terms, not on the terms that had been negotiated. So why were the original terms not accepted in the first place?" they argued.
Shore workers were livid when they learnt that the seafarers' collective agreement provides for redundancy payments in some cases amounting to nearly Lm60,000. "Although the two collective agreements were signed by the GWU on the same day, we (the shore-based employees) are not entitled to any specific redundancy payments, which means that with the closure of Sea Malta we end up unemployed and without compensation.
"To rub salt into the wound, we know that we would have had our job secure and would still have enjoyed the same pay had the GWU agreed to go along with the views of the majority of its members at Sea Malta," the workers said.
Seafarers who have worked for Sea Malta for only a few years and who were eligible for smaller redundancy payments, were among those who also urged the GWU to support the Grimaldi deal. Fourteen seafarers were in favour of the deal and 11 are not GWU members. Their voice remained unheard.
"Six members of the GWU Sea Malta group committee are veterans of Sea Malta; three of them are captains and another two are senior engineers. This means that they would have been the highest beneficiaries of redundancy payments, if any are made," the workers said.
Citing a few examples, sources said a master with 30 years' service and with a weekly wage of Lm280 would be entitled to close to Lm60,000 in redundancy payments; and a Master with 23 years' service would have got Lm45,000. A chief engineer with 26 years' service would get close to Lm50,000.
Still, legal sources said, should the company be declared bankrupt, as the government has said it would be, the employees would be entitled to only 13 weeks' wages and not redundancy benefits.
In the case of Sea Malta, there is no specific fund for termination benefits for employees in case of a company being declared bankrupt and no termination benefits would be paid. Nor would they be ranked on the same ranking level as wages, the sources said.