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Karl Schembri
Several government workers redeployed through the Industrial Projects Services Limited (IPSL) are getting as much as Lm100 more than their colleagues per week for the same jobs and enjoying better working conditions in what is becoming a highly frustrating situation concocted by the government and the General Workers Union.
It is a clear case of two weights and two measures sanctioned by the very workers’ representatives. Since 4 November 2003, when government and the GWU signed the IPSL agreement redeploying ex-shipyards workers to a multitude of government departments and agencies, an army of 470 workers have been granted privileged conditions in relation to their new colleagues whose pay and benefits have remained the same.
It is only now sinking in, as some of the redeployed workers are refusing to do certain basic jobs on various imaginative pretexts, enraging the other workers who feel betrayed by the government and the union in the creation of a new class of workers.
GWU Secretary General Tony Zarb, who signed the contract, said the basis for the agreement was the condition that the former shipyards employees and other workers to be redeployed through IPSL had to retain their previous conditions irrespective of where they would be posted and the kind of work they would be doing.
The Office of the Prime Minister confirmed the inconsistent working conditions but refused to state the extent of the discrepancies. MaltaToday is informed that in certain cases there are up to Lm100 differences between workers.
“It is not ethical to publish salaries and conditions of individual employees,” a spokesman for the prime minister said. “The agreement reached on 4 November 2003 between Government and the General Workers Union (GWU), relating to ex-shipyards employees assigned to IPSL, provided for the employees to retain only their basic salary as it stood on the date of the agreement. This agreement further stipulated that the new Collective Agreement of the Malta Shipyards Ltd did not apply to those employees who had been absorbed into IPSL.”
Union Haddiema Maghqudin Secretary General, Gejtu Vella, admitted he received several complaints from his own members about the situation but said the agreement secured in 2003 safeguarded the jobs of several workers who would otherwise be made redundant.
“It is a difficult situation,” Vella said. “Workers do complain that it is unfair, but I try to explain that the only alternative would be to sack all those workers, and it benefits nobody to just declare 470 workers as unemployed.”
kschembri@mediatoday.com.mt
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