Selmun Place hotel staff plan second protest march

Selmun Palace workers and their families would be holding a second protest march on Monday against the “insensitive and heartless” manner in which the government was handling the hotel’s sale, General Workers’ Union general secretary Tony Zarb said.

Workers will be meeting in front of the GWU’s offices in Valletta and then walk towards the Prime Minister’s Office in Castille.

Workers also protested last week after parent company Air Malta announced that all 58 hotel employees would be dismissed. Since then, the airline issued redundancy notices to the hotel employees, Mr Zarb said.

He said he knew of foreign investors interested in buying the hotel and take on the workers. The union had a 90-minute meeting with one of them on Thursday. The company representative, who had been in Malta for about five weeks, was still waiting to meet high ranking government officials to discuss the issue, he said.

The hotel, operated by a subsidiary of Air Malta, was closed some months ago after raking up debts of €13 million.

During talks chaired by the Director of Labour, the union asked Air Malta to retain the workers on its books and transfer them to the new owners when the hotel is sold. Alternatively, the union wants the employees to be temporarily absorbed by the government and a condition included in the sale agreement so that the eventual buyer will re-employ the workers.

However, according to the GWU, the company and the government were refusing both options.

“This just goes to show how insensitive and heartless they are,” Mr Zarb said yesterday as he called on the government to guarantee employment for Air Malta staff as the company undergoes major restructuring. Some 600 workers are expected to lose their jobs with the national carrier. Mr Zarb was closing the general conference of the GWU’s pensioners’ association. He read out the main concerns raised by the association, including constantly higher bills, criminal acts against the elderly, a shortage of pills pensioners are entitled to for free, long waiting lists for operations and anomalies in pensions.