Bid to halt crucial GWU meeting 'undemocratic'

The general secretary of the General Workers' Union, Tony Zarb, argued yesterday that the court should not uphold a request to halt an extraordinary general meeting of its public sector section because the bid was not a democratic one.

Mr Zarb said that section secretary Josephine Attard Sultana wanted to stop the meeting where her post would be discussed. It was the majority of the section delegates who had requested the meeting to be called, Mr Zarb said.

Ms Attard Sultana had on Tuesday filed a writ calling on the courts to issue a warrant of prohibitory injunction to stop the general meeting, scheduled for Monday. She claimed the manner in which the meeting was called violated the GWU statute, adding that her only source of income and her trade union career were at stake.

Mr Zarb is now calling on the First Hall of the Civil Court not to issue the warrant demanded by Ms Attard Sultana.

He argued that her writ was null because the public sector section, a part of the union, did not have the autonomous juridical personality required to take legal action.

In a five-page reply to Ms Attard Sultana's two-page writ, Mr Zarb said that on June 22 he received a petition asking for an extraordinary general meeting for the public sector section's delegates.

The petition, which asked to discuss the replacement of the section secretary, was signed by 37 of the 77 section delegates, he added. This amounted to 48 per cent of delegates and satisfied the 40 per cent quota laid down in the GWU statute.

Furthermore, the petition had been discussed during a national council session held on July 20, during which the central administration and the section's administration agreed to meet on July 25 to discuss a date for the extraordinary general meeting.

However, on July 25 no section representatives turned up and Ms Attard Sultana was on leave. Consequently, by means of a letter sent that day, Mr Zarb informed Ms Attard Sultana that the general meeting would be held on August 7.

Meanwhile, the section members had formed an ad hoc committee to look into the petition. This committee was sending for each delegate who signed the petition in an attempt to convince them to withdraw their approval. Mr Zarb said that when he learnt that signatories were even threatened and intimated not to support the general meeting he ordered the committee be dissolved.

To date, Mr Zarb said he had not received a request by the section's delegates to remove their name from the petition and thus he was in duty bound to look into their request for a general meeting. He added that Ms Attard Sultana had ended the writ by claiming that her trade union career and her only source of income were at stake and this after she had been elected to her post according to the statute.

Mr Zarb noted that while she had evoked that part of the statue that put her in the office she now occupied, she did not mention the part that provided for her removal from office. She was trying to stop a meeting where her position still had to be discussed and such undemocratic behaviour did not deserve the approval of the court, Mr Zarb said.

Lawyer George Abela signed the writ.

Lawyer Aron Mifsud Bonnici signed the reply.