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Investments Minister Austin Gatt was nothing short of his characteristic bluntness in talking of the least favourite of the government’s myriad companies last Friday, when he convened a press conference to berate the supposedly illegal protest by 50 shipyard workers in sympathy of seven colleagues suspended from work for being caught asleep on the job. Having to drag along the chairman of the yards John Cassar White to report on the ‘troubles’ (as one of Gatt’s aides told journalists before the press conference) at the shipyards, appeared to be too much of a blatant attempt at drumming up the electorate’s contempt for the bête noire of state investments.
Last week he served the Malta Shipyards a rasping set of choice quotes that will resonate loudly in voters’ ears in the run-up to the local council elections in March. The abrasiveness was well calculated, and finely tuned to the ear of middle class voters who do not think too highly of the shipyards. The minister appropriately mentioned that the country ‘did not owe a living’ to the MSL workers, and that the government would not tolerate any threats as there used to be back in the shipyard’s glory days of the 70s and 80s, a Labour stronghold that had the ease to hold an entire country at ransom.
The empty rhetoric was unsuited for what is an issue that had to be solved by management and the union, clearly divided over the interpretation of the collective agreement governing MSL workers. But the fuss Austin Gatt has managed to kick up over seven workers found asleep on the job for two hours, was a clever political stunt that has even left the Labour Party silent on the brouhaha. Obviously, nobody wants to touch the shipyards. With the name of Sammy Meilaq conjured up for theatrical effect, it looks like the General Workers Union have been caught unawares in an astute political ploy.
And yet, Gatt has attempted to pander to voters by conjuring up the millions in losses at the shipyards and reminding workers there that taxpayers had had enough of paying for the ‘yards, which had been given Lm300 million in subsidies till 2003 and another Lm113 million for restructuring.
Such a statement may sound cavalier enough, given that taxpayers have had to contend with interest rate hikes that have effectively wiped out the tax savings many expected this year. The fact is that the recent restructuring at the shipyards was nothing more than the Nationalist government’s own attempt at resolving the economic laggardness of the Malta Drydocks and Malta Shipbuilding. That was achieved back in 2003 by creating a surrogate entity that would accommodate a surplus of 900 workers who were not taken up for the new Malta Shipyards Ltd, the new company formed after the termination of Malta Drydocks and Malta Shipbuilding. The result was the Industrial Projects and Services Ltd (IPSL), at best another addition to the long history of the island’s useless, publicly-funded corporations. It was technically the employer of the surplus 900 workers, shipping out those not made redundant to local councils and other government departments and entities.
Metalworkers and welders can today be found idle at places such as the law courts, spending the twilight of their working life assisting their superiors in unchallenging tasks. If that is part of government’s intention to make the best use of human resources, then restructuring has a clearly different meaning in the public sector handbook. Eventually, throughout 2006, more foreign workers ended up being recruited at the ‘yards
The truth is that Lawrence Gonzi’s surgical intervention at the drydocks and shipbuilding companies, as social policy minister back then, did little for the country’s burgeoning public expenditure. After golden handshakes and redeployment to a phantom state owned-company which keeps government forking out wages to former Drydocks employees for practically doing nothing at all, it’s the taxpayer who has had to foot the bill for this “rationalisation” of the bloated public sector.
Austin Gatt may wish for nothing more than to close down the shipyards, while entertaining voters with tough discourse ahead of the March local council elections. For Labour, it’s a spectre which the party does not seem intent to deal with, at least not now, not as it stands to turn into a potential vote-loser. The great debate about the shipyards – life or death – is still very much alive, and with the phase-out of state subsidies coming slowly to an end, 2008 will be a crucial year of reckoning. |
