The General Workers Union is set to make tens of thousands of euros in extra profits from a government-funded scheme, as more than 200 long-term unemployed have joined the 625 already on the Community Workers Scheme (CWS), which the union administers.
In 2016, a year after it was introduced, the Education Ministry, responsible for the scheme, said the CWS “was intended to cater for 625 persons” and that “the government was not considering opening the scheme again” despite some long-term unemployed complaining they also wanted a “full-time government job”.
However, Times of Malta is informed that the government has reopened the scheme and placed an additional 200 workers onto its wage bill. CWS is managed by a GWU foundation.
Asked to explain how the number on the scheme had increased, a spokeswoman for the Education Ministry confirmed that more jobless have been put on the GWU foundation’s books.
While refusing to state whether the government had changed its policy and to explain the reasons, the spokeswoman only said that “the increase is in part due to the fact that Gozitans, previously under various schemes, had now been grouped together under the Community Workers Scheme”.
Asked to state how much the scheme’s administrator would earn in extra profits, the spokeswoman did not reply.
However, she said that “the contract rate set at bidding stage still applies”.
In 2016, The Sunday Times of Malta reported that the JobsPlus (government employment agency) scheme for the jobless had been privatised through a multimillion-euro tender to the GWU.
According to a five-year contract signed between the government and the pro-Labour union, a GWU foundation was to receive €980 per unemployed person on the scheme. The union was obliged to allocate mostly manual maintenance jobs at government entities, NGOs and local councils to them in return for a 40-hour week paid at slightly higher rates than the minimum national wage.
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The union was allowed to keep as its profit the remainder of the money after deducting the minimum wage, national insurance payments and all other administrative costs.
Although the GWU has always refused to say how much it was profiting from the scheme, informed sources told Times of Malta that the union was earning some €200 a month from every jobless person.
“The fact that more than 200 extra unemployed have now joined the scheme means that the GWU will increase its profits considerably over the remaining period of the contract, which runs until 2021,” the sources said.
According to the government, the scheme was intended to phase out the number of long-term unemployed on its books and to give its members the required training to make them eligible for private, productive employment.
Those on the scheme are automatically removed from the unemployment register, while the National Statistics Office counts the scheme’s beneficiaries as private sector workers, since their official employer is a GWU foundation – a private entity.
Just a few weeks ago, local councils and parishes complained the CWS employees assigned to them by the foundation were either never showing up for work, punching in and leaving after a few hours or spending the day doing “close to nothing”.