Once again, a union, this time the Union Haddiema Maghqudin (UHM), ordered industrial action because it decided it was getting nowhere with its negotiations with Maltapost over manning levels. By directing its members not to touch anything that had to do with government department and entities, the union was indulging in one of those part-strike actions that are not called by that name and were familiar in the past.
Its action prompted the Maltapost management to inform employees not to report for work on Monday. This was an understandable reaction. The company cannot fulfil its functions if a union picks and chooses what its employees should do. One would have thought that the civilised way out of any impasse the union decided had been reached would be to declare a disagreement and to refer the matter to the industrial tribunal.
The end result of all this was that Malta was without a postal service on Monday. Agreement was then reached between the three parties thanks to the intervention of the Information Technology Ministry after discussions that lasted more than six hours.
The union was up in arms because an agreement with management reached last May about manning levels had not been implemented. Maltapost argued that its hands were tightly tied by government policy that obliged it to recruit from among workers who had been redeployed as a result of restructuring at the Drydocks, PBS and other entities. The government revealed that it had identified 20 workers for Maltapost. Each had been certified as fit to work there.
When it came to the crunch, nine of these workers could not be employed because they took along with them a specialist's certificate that they were not strong enough for the job. In the circumstances one would be justified to assume that they were either too old or invalided out of their previous job. That assumption, however, was dismissed by whoever signed their certificate to say they were fit and confirmed by whoever the specialists were who signed their unfit-to-work certificate. That sounds rather strange, strange enough to ask who of those who certified were correct, who incorrect.
The situation is that nine vacancies in the manning strength of Maltapost remain just that. The process for filling them up now continues. The union says this has to be done within a week. The government says it will do its best to provide the missing links. It would certainly be best were these to come from the redeployed pool of workers who lost their job as a consequence of restructuring. The government should think carefully and seriously what to do about men who are selected for a job and either simply refuse to touch it or carry out their work inefficiently.
For its part, the union, any union, should break out of any mould that attracts it to take arbitrary action rather than work through the various processes available to it when it is confronted by any situation it regards suspiciously. The UHM could have conducted itself more maturely on this occasion and past events indicate it is able to do so. More important, the union knows this, too.
These are testing times for everybody - the government, management, the trade unions, workers, indeed society in general. More than testing they are challenging times. That requires from all the players the utmost good sense in their dealings with one another.