Some time ago (I’ve been taking it a bit easy this week, a bit like Manwel Mallia ignoring his EU counterpart) I read a piece by the President of the GWU, Mr Victor Carachi, who laid the blame for precarious employment directly at the door of the Government.

Lest you wrench your neck with a double take of cosmic proportions, let me hasten to reassure you that the world has not shifted on its axis: the President of the General Workers’ Union was not criticising the Government of Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, current leader of the Labour Party.

There’s about as much chance of that happening as Vladimir Putin assuring NATO that they’re right, he’s an arrogant jerk and he will be pulling out of the Ukraine tomorrow.

There’s no reason why Putin should do that little thing, of course, no less an authority on foreign relations than our very own Foreign Minister has assured the world that what is going on in that country is just a little student high jinx. But then again, George Vella wasn’t particularly exercised about the situation in Libya, thereby proving his own rule about getting monkeys when you pay peanuts. You need to recall, in this context, that the Finance Minister, who should know about these things, has classified Ministerial salaries as peanuts.

Carachi, pretty obviously, was blaming the Gonzi Government for precarious employment. Did you think he’d be doing anything but that? Seriously?

Let’s examine the man’s claim, shall we?

On our adopting the Acquis Communitaire, that is to say on joining the European Union, a step in our national history that the General Workers’ Union was opposed to with gusto (making it about the only workers’ union in Europe that was against joining, but needs must when the Labour Party decrees it) employment law in Malta, with which I happen to be on nodding terms, went through a sea-change and a half.

Part-timers, definite contract workers, reduced-hours workers, all saw their rights solidify and expand almost exponentially. To be fair, there had been desultory attempts to sort this out in the past, but they were messed up, leaving too many loopholes: now, under the Acquis, we have a body of law that gives a clear and strong set of rights to virtually everyone who functions as an employee, even, latterly, those who sign a “self-employed” contract but are actually a rose, by whatever name they are called.

So, for the President of the GWU to blame the Gonzi Government for “precarious employment” is ingenuous in the extreme, to the point of devilishness.

True, enforcement of workers’ rights - even under the Acquis regime - was sporadic and perhaps less than ideal. The Department of Industrial & Employment Relations had - and still has - limited resources and certain types of employers do tend to try to drive a coach and four through the law, as they have from time immemorial, so people did - and still do - get abused, but to lay this at the door of the previous Government is to do the same to the present one, because not much has changed.

In fact, from many stories one hears, the current bunch are cozying up to the filthy capitalists’ lobby even more than the previous bunch, so what price protection of workers nowadays, I ask?

What Carachi, in his zeal to dump on the PN Government and act like that cute little puppy with the old gramophone, doesn’t see, of course, that by his own words, he is condemning his own General Workers’ Union, because they - and every other union - form one third of the social equation that is supposed to give the result of workers protected by law, by free association and by equitable prosperity.

What is the GWU doing to combat precarious employment (assuming for a moment that it’s as bad as they chose in the past to say that it was) under a Labour Government?

Pray tell.