Resilient unions prove successful

The annual report published by the Registrar of Trade Unions a few weeks ago reveals that, in absolute terms, trade union membership between June 2010 and June 30, 2011 grew by 483. This represents an increase of 0.56 per cent over the previous year.

...the trade union membership does not match the increase that has occurred in employment- Saviour Rizzo

On the basis of the total number of gainfully employed persons (148,546, in May 2011, as per National Statistics Office news release NSO 190/2011), trade union density (the number of trade union members in proportion to gainfully employed workers) stands at 57.7 per cent.

A number of trade unions failed to send their returns to the registrar. It is normal practice that such missing figures be included as “additions by late returns” in the report of the following year. If one were to take into account the membership of these unions based on the numbers declared last year (2009/2010) and add them up to the total, the increase in membership would be 1,569 (1.8 per cent) while union density would rise to 58.4 per cent.

However, these figures of trade union density may not be totally correct because not all trade union members are in gainful employment.

The definition of a trade union in the Employment and Industrial Relations Act (EIRA 2002) is “an organisation consisting wholly or mainly of workers”. The word “mainly” gives leeway to trade unions to register members on their books who are not in gainful employment. Indeed, membership of the General Workers’ Union and the Union Ħaddiema Magħqudin comprises 11,029 pensioners. If one were to deduct this number from the total of trade union membership on the assumption that it is very likely that the great majority of these pensioners are not active in the labour market, trade union membership as a ratio to the total number of people in gainful employment would be 50.3 per cent. But what is striking in the figures provided by the Registrar of Trade Unions is the drop of 468 in the membership of the Malta Union of Teachers, which represents a loss of six per cent over the previous year.

The union stated that the drop in membership was due to a stocktaking exercise of membership through which it struck off its records a number of members who had left the teaching profession and failed to notify the union. This statement by the MUT may have been necessary to rebut any claims, which might have been tacitly made, that the decrease in its membership was due to its withdrawal as an affiliate member of the Confederation of Malta Trade Unions.

Apart from this, the figures do not reveal any new trends.

The largest trade union, having more than 50 per cent of trade union membership, remains the GWU. Lately, this union launched an aggressive campaign to recruit new members.

This initiative must have been successful because the union managed to increase its membership by 1,427, a 3.4 per cent increase over the previous year. The increase is evenly distributed in all but one (energy, chemical and printing) of its sections.

The second largest trade union, the UĦM, which is the countervailing force of the GWU, has also registered an increase of 485 members. It has the highest number of members in the government employees section, which, with a membership of 6,023, represents 22.3 per cent of its membership.

The dominance of these two trade unions, the GWU and the UĦM, in the country’s industrial relations system is such that the combined membership of both trade unions amounts to 82 per cent of the total trade union members. Yet, even though these two unions, together with many others, have managed to attract more members to their fold, the overall increase in the trade union membership does not match the increase that has occurred in employment. In other words, the increase in trade union membership did not translate into an increase in trade union density.

The decline of the manufacturing industry, the substantial reductions of jobs in the public sector and the closure of Malta Shipyards – three sectors that traditionally have been highly unionised – must have been a setback to the Maltese trade unions. Subcontracting, which has become the practice of public entities and large firms, may also have had a negative effect because it has proved to be very difficult for trade unions to recruit members among workers employed in subcontracting firms.

Moreover, the increase in employment is occurring in sections, such as financial intermediation and e-betting, which traditionally are not the terrain of trade unions.

The fact that in this hostile new economic scenario trade union density is still over 50 per cent, which, by European standards, is relatively high, shows that the Maltese trade union movement is coping adequately to the changes that are continuously occurring in the Maltese labour market.