Unions are involved in a dispute over the recognition of bus drivers. Photo: Bertrand Borg

The dispute between Union Ħaddiema Magħqudin, the General Workers’ Union and Transport Malta over which trade union represents the bus drivers brings to mind how a similar dispute was unsuccessfully resolved at Malta Drydocks back in 1994.

I was then secretary of the managers’ union (DSESU) and a dispute arose when the Malta Drydocks Council suddenly withdrew the trade union recognition long enjoyed by the DSESU in representing the yard’s managers.

The council had decided that the majority of the managers now wanted the GWU to represent them.

Following an unsuccessful conciliation meeting with the Director of Labour, the case went before the Industrial Tribunal. It took the tribunal five years to take an unbelievable and unprecedented decision: that every manager had to testify and declare in open court which union he would wish to represent him. Remember that this was the drydocks in 1994 and, perhaps not surprisingly, large drydocks-produced posters cropped up insulting a manager who did not ‘vote’ as ‘anticipated’.

After all the managers had voted, the tribunal took another decision. That there was still doubt on who was to represent the managers. And the tribunal decided that a secret vote should now be held under the supervision of the Electoral Commission. When time went by and nothing happened, the DSESU wrote to the Commission itself. The Electoral Commission refused to carry out this vote.

The union took the ‘recognition’ case before the Constitutional Court and, after another five years without a decision being made, it had no alternative but to put the case to sleep, sine die, a full 10 years after a unilateral decision robbed members of a recognised union from the representation they wished and with the law providing practically no support.

I would, therefore, certainly not recommend that any similar dispute today is addressed in the same manner.