Editorial

As the government studies the implications of a recommendation by the International Labour Organisation over a law on public holidays, the General Workers' Union is claiming victory and telling workers to rejoice over the move. The union would appear to have reason to rejoice as it has obtained confirmation from the highest labour organisation of the workers' right to freedom to negotiate working conditions with employers, which is essentially what the recommendation boils down to.

If this is a correct reading of the outcome of the ILO's deliberations, the GWU has reason to bask in the glory of the win, one that has come at a time when it needs it most following its lackluster performance over a number of issues. Should the government have gone to the extent to legislate when the trade unions turned down its proposal on public holidays?

The Times had at one time accused the Prime Minister of not being diplomatic over the issue, and others had warned the government it was moving in the wrong direction. The GWU had strongly opposed the move when it was brought up in talks on a social pact within the Malta Council for Economic and Social Development.

When, to the country's great disappointment, the trade unions could not come to an agreement on the social pact, the government went ahead and did exactly what it had warned and amended the law to disallow entitlement to extra days for holidays falling over weekends.

In September last year, the GWU submitted a formal complaint to the ILO over the move and the governing body has now approved a recommendation saying the law does not automatically render null existing collective agreements. It said employers and trade unions had a right to negotiate and agree on whether a public holiday falling on a weekend should be compensated for.

As if to reduce the degree of culpability, the government's first reaction, at least as given by a spokesman for the Office of the Prime Minister to The Times, was that the ILO was effectively contesting a law drawn up by a former Labour administration, according to which, he said, legislation took precedence over collective agreements.

As the legality or otherwise of the government's action over public holidays is thrashed out by industrial relations experts, it would certainly not be out of place now to go beyond the tip of one's nose, as it were, and, while reaffirming the trade unions' right to negotiate, consider too the motive that had made the government move in that direction in the first place.

It was certainly not a case of the government wanting to ride roughshod over the workers. It could hardly be so naïve as to do this, not when, at the time it was in opposition, it had for years fought so valiantly against direct and indirect actions against trade unions and workers' interests.

In the case over public holidays, the government had acted out of an urgent national need for some kind of concrete measure to help raise competitiveness after the social partners closed the doors shut in its face.

Should this have made the government resort to amending the law in the way it did? Maybe not. Should it now react by cutting the number of public holidays? It would be a highly unpopular move if it were to do so. But should not the unions, in the long-term interest of their own members, at least agree to revamp the idea of knocking into shape a social pact?