Many years ago, when I lived in a cute but noisy square in Żabbar, there was a problem with the electricity supply to our house: on windy days the wire from the government’s grid got disconnected. Invariably, we’d phone Enemalta, who always sent someone, eventually. No matter when we called, they always turned up very late in the evening. A nice, friendly and rowdy bunch who’d wake up the whole neighbourhood as they banged on our door shouting “Enemalta”.
I was always pleased to see them and offered them coffee and God knows what else at that ungodly hour. Amazingly, they were always four: a driver, a technician, one who carried the ladder and a fourth who gave you a running commentary on what they were presumably doing. He was also the guy you tipped at the end and waved goodbye like he were an old friend – until the next time.
In time, my family and I moved away from that square and eventually emigrated from the island, only to return to give Malta another try, under Labour. Now that’s optimism for you.
Our first concern on our return was getting connected to the internet. To our surprise, the day the service provider turned up outside our door, there was no gang-of-four huddled up inside a van but one man with ladder on his shoulder.
He did on his own what Enemalta needed four men to do and he did more.
He proved that free market capitalism had finally come to Malta, except that, by then, Enemalta was bankrupt.
Prime Minister Joseph Muscat promised to put Enemalta on sound financial footing. His mega project of a gas-fired power station that would magically slash prices was meant to be up and running next month. Nothing has happened, of course; there is no new power station.
Just like those Enemalta crew whose work came undone the moment they left, Muscat’s energy project crumbled the moment he became prime minister.
So, instead, today we’re all happily paying for his false energy cuts from our taxes and from overpriced fuel at the petrol pumps.
With Labour there’s always a swindle. I used to tip those Enemalta workers each time they came hoping they’d done a good job, though they never did.
Muscat was, likewise, tipped generously with votes at the last election and his delivery has been dismal.
The only volunteer Muscat could find to bail out Enemalta was the communist Chinese government, in the guise of a commercial company. In partly privatising the national energy company, Muscat has opened more than a can of worms. He’s put his sidekick, the General Workers’ Union, in quite an ideological quandary.
As the Enemalta employees’ representative, the GWU had the unenviable task of gently driving the truth home to its members that, now that the capitalist-communist Chinese are here, things will have to change. It is difficult to believe that the union did not see that coming.
There’s a curious press release on the union’s website, which dates back to early 2010. This was around the time when Muscat, as Labour leader, went to China to sign an ‘agreement’ with the communist State there, contents of which are only now being revealed.
The 2010 GWU statement shows a beaming GWU chief, Tony Zarb, with the Chinese ambassador. They were discussing possible Chinese investment in Malta, most especially in the production of photovoltaic panels, but there is no mention of selling off Enemalta to China to do that.
Probably thinking it was taking a dig at the PN government of the time, the GWU lamented that the only Chinese investment in the previous 30 years was Leisure Clothing. That prize Chinese investment hailed by the GWU has turned out to be rather scandal ridden, with accusations of slave labour. No wonder the GWU’s Enemalta members are so apprehensive about their new masters.
Three wicked sisters are out to exploit and milk the Cinderella that has become Malta
The union keeps taking offence each time the Nationalists remind it how its members had been taken for a ride by the government it supports. Privatisation is a standard anathema for the GWU, except when there’s Labour in government.
So, things haven’t been going too well between the union and the PN, to the point that the union has now turned down an invitation to discuss the fate of Enemalta employees.
“Send the workers to us so we’ll take care of them as we always do,” was the gist of the GWU’s arrogant but weak reply. It didn’t sound reassuring, considering that the PN is accusing GWU shop stewards of going around with secret lists of where selected Enemalta employees could be redeployed.
PN justice spokesman Jason Azzopardi did not help matters. Some days ago, he said the Public Accounts Committee should probe the leasing of part of the GWU’s premises in Valletta to the government utilities billing company ARMS Ltd.
All that Zarb would say on the issue was that it was of a “commercial nature”. That was truly well spoken for a latter-day leftist capitalist and chief of a union recently selected by Transport Malta for a five-year lease contract for property in Marsa. For that property, the union will be receiving €500,000 annually in public money.
Clearly, the GWU is learning quite a bit from its Chinese friends on how to blend communism with capitalism, only to become a perversity of what it once stood for. Why its members are not abandoning it in droves, and that instead more workers are joining its ranks, only goes to show how politically immature this country is.
No one in his right mind would join a union that is in league with his employer, the government. And, yet, they do because it is not workers’ rights they have in mind but favours. They seek the sanctuary of the union so that, ‘should need arise’, they could use its good political offices, in addition to their local Labour MP, of course.
There is no worker solidarity here, this is institutionalised submissive patronage, a leftover from colonial times.
The union’s lust for new members shows no bounds and, for years, it has been campaigning against what it describes as precarious work. It has been targeting membership from companies who win public sector contracts and who pay wages and salaries below those of government workers.
The union claims this is unjust and has managed to arm twist the government to come up with a ridiculous policy that would force these companies to pay their workers the equivalent of what a government worker receives for doing the same job.
It is a policy that undermines the concept of the free market and makes government subcontracting superfluous because, at the end of the day, it would cost the same to the taxpayer.
The Prime Minister is now promising to involve even more private firms to “rescue government-owned entities in difficulty”.
It would have been a commendable move had he not gone on to spoil it all by taking Enemalta as a model case.
Clearly, there are more awkward situations in store for the GWU, created for it by its sister, the Labour Party. The union is the third pillar upon which this Tagħna lkoll regime has been built, the other two pillars being Labour and the government it holds in a stranglehold.
Together they make up the three wicked sisters out to exploit and milk the Cinderella that has become Malta. There is no ideology behind anything they do.
Muscat has metamorphosed Labour beyond recognition and the GWU must now toe the line, having backed the wrong horse all along.
Like Labour, its sister-in-arms, the GWU is fast losing its soul.