Wednesday, 23rd April 2008 - 18:02CET
GWU calls for measures to ease impact of inflation
The GWU has called for urgent economic measures to ease the impact of galloping inflation on the workers.
It said that a meeting of the Retail Price Index Board this morning showed that inflation in March reached almost 4 percent, with the steepest price increases being in food products, particularly fish. This inflation rate did not include the recent fuel price hikes.
The union said it was seriously concerned at the way inflation was continuing to rise and how it was eroding workers’ purchasing power. It was therefore closely monitoring price movements following the end of price stability agreements with importers as well as the international price of oil, especially since the power surcharge is set for revision in June.
The current situation underlined the urgent need for effective economic measures to be taken to ease the impact of inflation on the workers and on industrial competitiveness, the union said.
RSS
Comments
When the UHM asked for Lm9.00 in COLA, it was when under the minority Socialist/Mintoffian/Mifsud Bonnici's Government between 1981 and 1987, with the GWU's blessing, the workers, many of whom were GWU members, had their wages frozen for more than five years with the promise made by the MLP in government and never kept, that prices will be frozen as well during the same period.
Either you are still young and do not know what the workers went through or if you are my age, you simply do not want to remember because you are ashamed of those very dark years in the Maltese history. .
What do you think GWU should do today? Ask for PEPSI instead?
But is the GWU in a position, always in the interest of the workers, their families and the pensioners, to suggest to government some ideas it may have that can be considered as needed “measures" to tackle this problem.
It is very easy to simply be an armchair critic rather than giving your share of constructive ideas towards the solution of a problem.