The usual vitriol in the debate about the 2019 Budget tends to make much more visible the polarised partisan divide in the Maltese political scenario. A new dimension which is lately bolstering this divide is the issue of foreign workers.

According to statistics, provided by TVM News (April 4), there are 42,300 foreign workers in Malta representing 17 per cent of the Maltese workforce. More than half of these foreigners (29,500) are EU nationals while 12,800 are third-country nationals.

The sectors that tend to attract most of the foreigners are online gaming, financial services and pharmaceuticals.

These relatively new industries in the Maltese labour market, which are contributing substantially to the robustness of the Maltese economy, offer highly paid jobs. It looks as if the Maltese educational system has, so far, not been able to produce the personnel with the sophisticated skills which these sectors demand.

While the foreigners in taking these jobs may be creaming the highest-paid jobs in Malta, it has however to be noted that foreigners are also being employed in sectors such as catering and construction which are no longer attractive to Maltese workers.

The chairman of Jobsplus, the Maltese Public Employment Service provider which connects job seekers with employers, in an interview with The Malta Independent (February 12) said that the residual gap in the labour market, in terms of quantity and quality, is not likely to be solved in the near future. This means that the viability of the Maltese labour market will continue to depend on foreign workers.

The shortage of skills in demand in the newly set up industries is likely to persist in the near future as the gestation period of an educational programme aimed at addressing such an issue is often long term. Moreover due to ongoing changes of the digitalised technology such a programme has to cope with the problem of escalation whenever a deeper level of actual need is discovered leading to a higher level of demand.

The Prime Minister has argued that this influx of foreigners is mainly due to the cosmopolitan nature of a post-industrial society

The Prime Minister, as if to add a new weight to this debate, brought in another dimension to the issue. He argued that this influx of foreigners is mainly due to the cosmopolitan nature of a post industrial society, in which the number of itinerant workers is increasing.

Cosmopolitanism is based on a perception of a society more open to different ideas and ways of doing things. It may of course, as the Opposition is implying, have a negative impact on the qualitatively strong roots that create the ideal environment for the flourishing of a community.

This stance being adopted by the Opposition and the way this issue is being addressed by the Prime Minister has brought into vogue another binary scale in the political debate between the party in government and the Opposition: cosmopolitanism and communitarism.

So far there seems little to suggest that people are fully immersed in the argument about these seemingly new poles in the Maltese political scenario. Perhaps the people feel that this issue calls for a more sober debate characterised by a less partisan approach.

Even the trade unions have adopted a cautious stance on this issue. Their voice has been notably absent. Maybe this is because they are finding it difficult to recruit members from the sectors wherein the foreign workers are finding employment. Indeed the substantial increase of workers in the Maltese labour market is not being matched by an equal increase in trade union membership.

The Malta Employers Association, looking at the practical side of this issue, in a press release on the debate about the 2019 budget, stated that foreign workers are needed since the demand for labour is higher than the supply. It however added that the increase in population, partly caused by these foreign workers, requires a comprehensive strategy to cater for the socio-economic impact of such a phenomenon.

What is being implied by such vague statements or lack of them is that the main thrust of the argument should be on whether the flourishing of a community and secure support for a person’s identity can still prevail in this cosmopolitan nature of a post industrial society.

I personally think that this new scenario is capable of offering such a guarantee as the ideology of a cosmopolitan society is based on the belief that human beings belong to a single community based on shared morality. After all it was not just the influx of foreign workers that has made Maltese society more cosmopolitan. By becoming part of an international institution and conforming to its policy regime the exposure to a cosmopolitan culture was inevitable.

Saviour Rizzo is a former director of the Centre for Labour Studies at the University of Malta.

This is a Times of Malta print opinion piece