Unions unite in Go fight

Unions are likely to present a common front against plans by telecoms company Go to reduce its workforce by 350.

Workers at the former state-owned company have urged their unions to unite and meet the management as one front, following a letter by CEO David Kay on Wednesday telling employees that "in the short term" the company wants to reduce its present workforce of 1,350 to 1,000.

The unity between the main unions General Workers Union, the Union Haddiema Maghqudin is unprecedented and could present a substantial hurdle for the management.

"Ideally", Mr Kay said, the target is reached through the voluntary retirement schemes but if that failed "the decrease in headcount will be met via other measures... the board of directors has established that the target headcount should be in the region of 1,000 employees in the short term and management is to seek to achieve this," Mr Kay said in the letter.

But unions pledged to fight back especially because the company, up till Wednesday, had made no mention of these targets, even though it has warned repeatedly that there would be no more voluntary schemes when the current one ends in May.

After May, the company, which was privatised after Dubai-based firm Tecom Investments bought the government's 60 per cent stake in 2006, will be free from an agreement it reached with government not to shed jobs for three years.

"I'm surprised at the CEO's statement to say the least," GWU section secretary Andrew Mizzi said.

"The company never spoke about redundancies. What's more, while it said that it wanted to reduce the number of workers through voluntary schemes, it continued to employ people," he said.

Go rebutted this criticism, saying it always made it clear that it was unhappy with the size of the workforce. It also said that it had signed a joint statement with the GWU urging workers to take up the voluntary schemes.

The company also defended the recruitment of additional staff, saying there were certain posts that could not be filled by existing staff.

"In the majority of instances, such opportunities were also made available via internal calls for Go employees."

Mr Mizzi's UHM counterpart Nicholas Baldacchino, was less surprised at the announcement, but insisted that the company never informed anybody of any redundancies or revealed its targets.

Employees who spoke on condition of anonymity said there was a lot of anger among workers, particularly among those belonging to the former Telemalta/Maltacom (who are being directly targeted by the retirement schemes).

"We are angry and disillusioned because the management did not speak clearly for years," one employee said.

The company has been particularly hit by the changing landscape in the telecoms sector. Three years ago, it had a monopoly on fixed-line telephony.

That has now ended and it has to compete with five telecoms companies in different services.

For the first time in years, last week the company reported a pre-tax loss of €1.3 million. This included a payment of €12.9 million in respect of past pension costs which the company was ordered to pay in a court case in July last year, and a charge of €15.6 million in respect of losses suffered by Greek telecoms company Forthnet in which Go is part shareholder.

A year earlier the company had recorded a profit of €27.6 million.