Thursday, 8th May 2008 - 16:17CET
GWU denies low productivity caused shipyard's losses
The GWU said this afternoon that it was insisting on its demand for a public inquiry into a ship conversion contract which had cost Malta Shipyards substantial losses.
The union was following up a statement on the contract it issued two days ago and a reaction by the government. In its statement the union had claimed that the shipyard would incur losses of up to €46 million on the contract. The government had said that figure was grossly exaggerated. It also said the shipyard was in a precarious and unsustainable financial situation because of low workers’ productivity.
The union in today’s statement said the government was wrong if it thought it could sideline the contract losses by “inventing” stories about the worker.
The union said it had not shirked its responsibilities , as the government had claimed, with regard to workers’ productivity. Indeed, since the last collective agreement was signed, the shipyard workers had made several sacrifices, as evidenced by their wage freeze, shift and job flexibility, a reduction of walking time and other reforms which ‘raised productivity’.
Once the government was so convinced that the workers were to blame for what was happening , in the shipyards, what was stopping it from ordering the inquiry?
The GWU said a major factor which had weakened productivity was overmanning, since the contract gave the client the right to request as many excess people as it wanted, without the dockyard managers being able to do anything about it. The blame for this rested with the foreign expert who was brought to Malta to draw up the contract and disappeared after six months.
The union denied the government's claim that it was given the necessary information about the financial state of the shipyard. It said it had for more than year been requesting information on spending being made on the leasing, rather than purchase of machinery, but was never given a reply.
The union noted that the government in its statement had not denied that for the conversion contract, the shipyard would not even recover the costs of material and subcontracting.
It said it would not rest until the people knew all the contract details.
RSS
Comments
To GWU : Go back to the 80s when thousands of workers were employed in shipyards before the elections and Dr. Eddie Fenech Adami(Todays President) made a speech on TV after winning the 1987 election stating that ALL those employed just before the elections - although overmanning the company, would be held in employment .
He was NEVER EVER appreciated for this act in any way and he was never invited inside the shipyards except after the explosion of the ship which took so many lives with it (God bless their souls).
Now GWU ,you are talking about over manning .Productivity, walking time etc.
Where were you when a few hundered workers did what they liked - blocked roads- walked along Aldo Moro road to listen to MLP meetings at valletta in their boiler suits.
Dr. Fenech Adami was more than a gentleman to these workers - He put their minds at rest as well as those of their families. He payed them for overtime , not like what labour did by freezing collective agreements and introducing time off in lieu.
How on earth do you expect to be credible when you did absolutely nothing when the workers needed you most and when politicians were using them as bait to win elections?
You did not even do anything in 1986 when MLP Govt did not keep it's promises.
The fact is that losses have been accumulating for many many years , reasons for this are many including most of all too much politics on the workplace.
Now it might be too late .
If this were a private owned company it would have been shut down ages ago , but we, tax payers, are contributing daily to the wages of our fellow maltese shipyard workers who have families and children.