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.