Labour’s hollow pre-election slogan was brought into sharp relief on Wednesday when Tony Zarb, head honcho at the General Workers’ Union, took great umbrage at the fact that Pawlu Lia had dared, had the temerity, the sheer gall, to oppose the union in some way.
One should be fair, it was not the fact that someone was opposing the union that was annoying Zarb, because fino in fond, they’re used to being on the other (I almost wrote “wrong”) side of many arguments. No, it was the fact that someone who is identified as being a Big Wheel in the Labour movement was not letting the union get away with something that was teeing off Zarb, because, don’t you know, Labour is in government now and that means that the General Workers’ Union must get its way, all the time and in everything.
To give the thing a bit of context, there’s a case running in the Industrial Tribunal concerning the recognition of trade unions within Bank of Valletta. This type of dispute is always a headache for the employer concerned, because the prudent thing to do is to keep one’s self equidistant from the contending unions and try as much as possible to let third parties, such as the Department of Employment or the Industrial Tribunal, sort it out, always letting the unions concerned make the running. In this particular case, from the little I know about the case, the bank opted actually to take a decision itself and it extended the hand of recognition to the jolly old General Workers’ Union, thus annoying no end the MUBE, who up to then had been the recognised union.
As to why the bank chose this path, I am not privy and it would be unseemly to speculate whether the fact that the government has something of a guiding hand in the way the bank does things has anything to do with the price of eggs.
That being as it may be, the bank’s choice of action caused a number of writs to start flying and the cosy little threesome, being the bank itself, the GWU and the MUBE, represented by doughty counsel, ended up in litigation on all fronts. At some stage, no doubt, some leading principle of law will be enunciated by one or the other of the fora in which the valiant knights are jousting, but this is not the point of Zarb’s little outburst against Dr Lia, MUBE’s lawyer, as I mentioned above.
This country has landed itself into quite a sorry state of affairs, and Zarb’s enunciation of what seems to be his union’s philosophy has dragged a rather off-putting little creature out from under its stone into the dazzling sunlight of publicity. Admittedly, Mr Zarb should not be taken as an erudite scholar charged with drawing up his outfit’s mission statement but the fact remains that he is the union’s leader and he has made it clear that he, and thus his union, expects the government, and anyone associated with it (such as, q.e.d. Dr Lia) to kowtow to the its every wish, because it’s their turn now, they decide what should and should not be done, so there.
As always, in order to give myself some sort of context, I ruminate on what would have been the reaction had something like this happened on the Nationalists’ watch. Not to put too fine a point on it, all hell would have broken loose and the sky would have fallen in, because due process should always be followed and what do you mean, you can fly in the face of accepted practise and take unilateral action? Today, life is different, today Labour is in power, thus the GWU is in power and any unilateral action you like can be taken as long as it favours the brave.
And woe betide you if you dare say different.