The dim prospects that Grimaldi's company Atlantica would buy Sea Malta were dashed yesterday afternoon when Emanuale Grimaldi informed Investments Minister Austin Gatt he was no longer interested in taking over the government's shares.
As a result, the on-going Sea Malta saga will be concluded on Monday when the company will be liquidated and Grimaldi's new firm, Malta Motorways of the Sea, will launch its operations on Tuesday.
Lloyd's List yesterday morning quoted Dr Grimaldi as saying "The door is closed but not locked".
Dr Gatt said: "But someone has now turned the key. And that someone is none other than Tony Zarb and the new militant clique running the General Worker's Union. Thanks to their repeated blunders, 144 people are without a job".
Speaking at a press conference shortly after a 45-minute meeting with Dr Grimaldi, Dr Gatt said workers had no one to blame for the loss of their job but the GWU for its incompetence in dealing with this matter.
"I am very angry, disappointed and cross that the crass incompetence of the GWU has led to so many job losses. Whatever Tony Zarb says and irrespective of whoever he tries to shift the blame on, he has no one to blame but himself and the militant clique around him," Dr Gatt said.
"It is ironic that the GWU is being disowned by both seafarers and shore-based workers who both wrote to the union informing it they don't agree with its decisions.
"The inability of the union's management to deal with this issue in the same way they dealt with the PBS, the shipyards and Malta Enterprise issues, speaks volumes about the way the union is run," Dr Gatt said.
In all of these companies, in spite of having more than one collective agreement and in some cases more than one company, the union held a single meeting for all workers and asked for a vote, but not in this case, Dr Gatt said.
Six months ago, without the help of the union, the government negotiated with Atlantica and obtained assurances that the Italian company would employ all seafarers, 12 shore workers and guarantee their jobs for three years.
This was later extended to five years, during which time they would have enjoyed the same privileges that the collective agreement afforded them, including redundancy payments," Dr Gatt said.
"We negotiated this on our own, we sent it to the union, and the union wanted to change the seafarers' conditions. To facilitate the deal, the government declared it would employ those shore workers who would not be employed by Grimaldi," Dr Gatt said.
"But the union began procrastinating and on November 1, I informed it that unless the agreement went through, Atlantica would withdraw. I made it clear that if this were to happen, there would be no redundancy payments and no alternative jobs would be offered.
"Following my intervention, on November 4, we managed to reach an agreement that seafarers would continue to work according to their current roster but would have to change as from January 1. To ensure there would not be any misunderstandings, I sent a copy of this agreement to all Sea Malta employees," Dr Gatt said.
"But the union started denying it had reached such an agreement. What happened between then and now is still fresh in everybody's mind and in spite of the GWU's U-turns, it was just too late.
"Grimaldi realised there is no reliable partner to speak to and thanks to the union, 144 people have lost their job. This is a replica of the Hotel Phoenicia issue. I can't understand why the union is being so stubborn. The GWU is in a time warp," Dr Gatt said.
He lambasted the GWU daily l-orizzont which yesterday reported Dr Gatt was orchestrating the whole Sea Malta saga, to then solve it and bask in the glory.
"On seeing what l-orizzont said, one's knee jerk reaction was to ask the union to solve the issue it had itself created. But as a minister, my responsibility is to try and safeguard and create jobs, and I will continue to do that in spite of the hurdles the GWU continues to lay in the government's path.
"There is only one truth in this whole affair. It was the government that tried to ensure no one loses their job, and it was the GWU's action that endangered them. Now the union is trying to paint a different picture, blaming everyone else, when it should be blaming itself," Dr Gatt said.
Contacted yesterday, Dr Grimaldi said he was "quite frustrated for not accomplishing what we have been working on for so long".
"I could not risk taking over Sea Malta with so many problems, with so many unsustainable working practices. I have been waiting for an agreement for very long. I have sent the chief of my personnel department to discuss with the union, but he too got nowhere. Now we have a new shipping company that will do what we would have done had we bought Sea Malta," he said.
Asked about Mr Zarb's warning who had welcomed him to invest as long as he employed the Sea Malta workers who wanted to work, Mr Grimaldi said:
"He should say the same to 1,200 ships operating under the Maltese flag. No one can dictate whom I employ. I am not buying the old company. I will follow local legislation and the contractual obligations we have but have nothing to do with the GWU
"If there are people who want to work with me I will consider them. Those with professional skills will be considered," he said.
Between today and tomorrow, Mr Grimaldi will in fact be interviewing shore workers who had applied to work for his new enterprise.
"We operate under the Swedish and Italian flags. We are very good employers. The problem with this issue was that you don't know what the union wanted and what the employees wanted. Among Sea Malta workers, it was evident that some wanted to work, some wanted to become government employees, some opted for redundancy payments while others still did not want to work.
"The unions have so many different requests that it is difficult to accommodate them all. You can't sustain that. This is a real difficulty for them, but I am not in a position to accommodate anyone," he said.
In another development yesterday, lawyer Shaheryar Ghaznavi, acting on behalf of officers and crew of Sea Malta Company Ltd, wrote to Mr Zarb informing him that the situation had remained unchanged and they were not accepting Grimaldi's offers.
"The tours of duty and remuneration are unacceptable," Dr Ghaznavi said.
"Hence it is surprising how the GWU has declared that the proposal is acceptable without having consulted and without having been authorised by my clients," Dr Ghaznavi wrote.
A copy of the letter was also sent to Dr Gatt, Sea Malta, MIMCOL and Ernest Sullivan, managing director of Sullivan Maritime Shipping Ltd, agents of Grimaldi in Malta.
In a statement, the GWU said the official letter was aimed "at stopping the GWU's efforts". The union convened a meeting for seafarers and informed them it would retain its position because it wanted to safeguard all the jobs at Sea Malta.
A meeting of the Malta Council for Economic and Social Development was convened with urgency at the request of the GWU.
MCSED chairman Victor Scicluna said it was "a purely informative meeting which the GWU requested as it wanted to inform the other social partners what was going on. It was an information session and no discussion took place. No decisions were taken.
"It is not the function of the council to go into the merits of cases such as the sale of the government shares in Sea Malta. The council goes into national issues not into negotiations of this type," he said.
Though the meeting lasted about an hour-and-a-half, Malta Employers' Association president Arthur Muscat and vice president Pierre Fava left soon after it started. "We left because it was rhetorical talk over and over again," Mr Muscat said.
"At the beginning of the meeting I said we had followed the Sea Malta issue and it appeared we had gone the full circle and there was no more to say about the matter.
"I congratulated Minister Gatt for his efforts in trying to find the best solution for the company and its 144 workers," he said.