GWU official asks court to stop crucial meeting

The secretary of the General Workers' Union's public sector section yesterday called on the courts to issue a warrant of prohibitory injunction to stop an extraordinary general meeting which she says will determine whether or not she would keep her job at the union.

Section secretary Josephine Attard Sultana, a GWU employee, submitted that the general meeting scheduled for next Monday violated the GWU statute, adding that her trade union career and her only source of income were at stake.

Ms Attard Sultana filed the writ against GWU general secretary Tony Zarb in the First Hall of the Civil Court.

She noted that the union's central administration had no right to call a general meeting for the delegates of the public sector section. The union's statute provided that such a meeting could only be called by the section's executive committee or on the request of at least 40 per cent of the section's delegates.

The statute further specified that issues dealing with a section within the union should be dealt with by the section's executive committee and that the central administration should get involved if the committee failed to find a solution.

She explained that on June 22 a petition was raised calling for an extraordinary general meeting for the section's delegates. The petition also called for the replacement of the section's secretary.

Ms Attard Sultana argued that the petition did not conform to the union's statute because the 40 per cent quota had not been reached. This resulted from a report compiled by an ad hoc committee set up by section representatives on July 17 to scrutinise the petition.

As outlined in documentation attached to the writ, the ad hoc committee noted that the public service section had 77 delegates. The petition in question contained 39 signatures, two of which were not of section delegates. On investigating the signatories, the ad hoc committee found that the ones who insisted on signing the petition dropped to 28, or 36.4 per cent. Consequently, the 40 per cent mark had not been reached.

For these reasons, Ms Attard Sultana called on the court to issue a warrant of prohibitory injunction to stop Monday's extraordinary general meeting.