Updated at 4.20pm with Żminijietna statement
It was shameful that some people in Malta were spreading far-right ideas and attempted to package them as traditional values or love for the nation, the General Workers' Union said.
In an evident reference to recent statement made by Opposition leader Adrian Delia, the GWU said it was even more shameful that this sort of language was being used in a bid to create fear and hatred towards foreigners who came to live in Malta, were working on the island and contributing to the future of the thousands who annually benefitted from social help and pensions.
Dr Delia has been saying that Malta risked socio-cultural ruin because of the flood of foreign workers, that the government’s policy regarding migrant workers was fuelling poverty and that foreign workers should be from the EU.
These speeches promoted selective migration or distinguished between foreign workers on the basis of whether or not they were coming from Europe or other continents
Such speeches, the GWU said, promoted selective migration or distinguished between foreign workers on the basis of whether or not they were coming from Europe or other continents.
Such talk was dangerous because it was at the level of those parties in Europe acquiring legitimacy from the fear they themselves have sowed among the people.
The political class had a responsibility to give the people real facts and not a conjecture of what one wished reality to be.
Speeches which painted foreigners as people pushing down workers’ pay levels were far from reality for the simple reason that at places where workers formed part of a trade union, there was no discrimination between the pay given to Maltese workers and foreign ones.
Collective agreements negotiated by the GWU never distinguished between gender, sexual orientation, religion or nationality. They addressed the fair remuneration of workers according to their work and not to who they were.
The GWU said that in the past years it had always been at the forefront to defend and promote social diversity in Maltese society.
The union believed diversity strengthened the people making them more prepared for the future.
It believed that every person should have respect, dignity, and solidarity at the place of work and no individual was inferior to anyone else.
Such xenophobic and discriminatory speeches weakened the social cohesion of a country that was growing and strengthening is place among the most advanced nations of the world, the union said.
'Blaming foreign workers is very dangerous' - Żminijietna
Leftist think-tank Żminjietna also criticised what it called "anti-foreign workers discouse", saying it went against EU laws.
31,000 of Malta's foreign workers came from other EU member states, the think-tank said, with a further 12,000 being third-country nationals.
EU treaties clearly prohibited discrimination based on nationality, they added, with the free movement of people a cornerstone of the EU.