ST workers vote to save their jobs

ST Microelectronics workers have voted in favour of a revised package of austerity measures that will see them out of pocket by €255 a year but still with a job to wake up to in the morning.

An overwhelming 70 per cent of the workers who cast their vote over the weekend, in the second such ballot in two weeks, said yes to an agreement that will keep the country’s largest employer here after long-standing fears over its future in Malta.

The company’s recently an-nounced investment in a new production line, using government aid, was linked to the cost-cutting measures being approved. This condition, however, may not have been clear to workers when they first voted, as only a few accepted the package.

Since then, the management and the General Workers’ Union (GWU) have held 15 meetings, in groups of 100, with the entire 1,500-strong workforce as the package was renegotiated. Workers were given a clear picture of the company’s situation and more or less told the deal was “do or die”.

This, according to GWU section secretary Andrew Mizzi, was what made the workers change their minds. Of the 945 workers eligible to vote, 860 cast their vote and 620 voted in favour.

“The fact that workers heard the difficulties directly from the management, along with the austerity package having been reduced by 25 per cent, made the workers realise that this was the best way forward,” Mr Mizzi said after the 30-minute vote counting process ended yesterday evening.

The talks between the management and the union focused on a revision of the allowance packages which would soften the blow of the cost-cutting measures.

In the original package the company had wanted to reduce workers’ income by nearly €2,000 a year and downsize the workforce by 400. After the union stepped in, the cut was reduced to €350 and has now been slashed even further to €255. Perhaps more importantly, there will be no further downsizing.

Moreover, Mr Mizzi said the union had managed to increase workers’ bonus for this year by €50 to €350 and renegotiated part of the shift allowance for Sundays, which the company had wanted to reduce considerably.

Another change from the second package was that new workers would not start on a minimum wage but at a lower wage than the agreed salary in the current collective agreement.

He said the workers had been given the “full picture” about the situation at the plant and how it developed over the past two years, when the company’s future in Malta started being called into question.

The union would now start negotiations on the new collective agreement for the period starting 2013.

The company had been asking for financial aid and looking at downsizing the workforce at the Malta plant by as much as 60 per cent for some years.

It took the plunge after the crisis, shedding 1,000 jobs in the past two years. Early in 2009, prospects were not looking good after the government turned down a request for an aid package that ran into tens of millions of dollars.

But since then, conditions on the international markets have improved and the prospect of rising labour costs in Asia made European plants more attractive to the management at the company’s headquarters in Geneva.