Yet another purge attempt at the General Workers’ Union, yet again with explosive consequences. Barely a year since the messy removal of public service section secretary Josephine Attard Sultana and president Francis Buttigieg, followed by Karmenu Vella and Emmanuel Zammit, yesterday it was the turn of the executive chairman of the union’s travel and insurance companies, Untours, to resign.
In his five-page, strongly worded letter of resignation, Charles Mizzi, 67 – a veteran union employee for the last 39 years – hit back at GWU president Salv Sammut and deputy secretary general Gejtu Mercieca who had accused him of “irregularities” following an investigation which, he wrote mockingly, “outshines Sherlock Holmes”.
Mizzi, who first made a name for himself as a journalist with l-orizzont and It-Torca, is credited with turning around the two companies from a crippling deficit to a net profit running into thousands of liri in the last four years. His term would have expired next January.
In his letter he calls the union’s secretary general Tony Zarb “a close friend”, suggesting that he is being influenced by the two GWU officials credited with egging Zarb on for more “militancy” – which invariably ends up being aimed more at the union’s own people than against government and employers.
Speaking to MaltaToday, Mizzi said: “Since Mercieca became deputy secretary general he has been surrounded by yes-men who agree to all his diktats, so he thinks he’s unstoppable. I’m not one of those yes-men. The union cannot go on like this.”
Sammut and Mercieca decided to “embark on a vindictive attack” – according to Mizzi – for going against their expectations when he was asked to hear the case of former GWU shop steward Raymond Zammit as Disciplinary Board Chairman.
“The GWU was asking for Zammit’s dismissal on allegations that he had passed confidential information on to the Nationalist media,” he wrote. “Despite all attempts and pressure, as chairman, together with the other board members, we gave a different sentence to the one expected by some. Because of that, I became the target of revenge because I followed my conscience.”
Sammut and Mercieca have “investigated” Mizzi’s way of operating the two companies despite the fact that it falls under MFSA rules demanding clear commercial procedures for the scrutiny of accounts.
Referring to Mercieca and Sammut as “the two investigators”, Mizzi says the mud they tried throwing at him “ended up dirtying their own faces and hands”.
“Sammut and Mercieca went behind my back and without the knowledge of the Board of Directors to the Untours Accounts Department, calling in the accountant and the board secretary” to look at the company’s accounts, urging the two employees not to tell anything about what they were doing.
“No serious chairman or board of directors can ever accept these abuses. According to the MFSA norms regulating commercial companies, the two shareholders’ representatives (you – Tony Zarb – as secretary general and Salvu Sammut as President, not Gejtu Mercieca) had the right to call an Extraordinary General Meeting with the board of directors and discuss what they felt were ‘abuses or abnormalities’. But despite the advice of other GWU officials, Mercieca and Sammut opted for the stage with an audience in front of them. They called a national council meeting, and they pleaded and cried so that the members would applaud them for an investigation which outshines Sherlock Holmes.”
Mizzi said the council meeting lasted four hours and proved inconclusive with regard to the accusations brought against him. But he was not allowed to be present and to give his own version, nor was he informed of the charges made against him.
“These are the shameful facts coming out of the Workers’ Palace which defy all human rights and every sense of justice, and which have been going on since certain individuals almost took over the entire GWU leadership.”
Mizzi also hinted at more chaos that has yet to come by stating that “Mercieca and Sammut will probably soon have to answer for their deeds”.
Mizzi slams the union’s top officials for trying to “tarnish my name and ridicule me, but whoever came up with this frame-up did not calculate that the general public knows me as much as they know Gejtu Mercieca and Salv Sammut.”
Mizzi said the “scandals” the two union officials uncovered were related to the fact that the board had increased his honoraria to Lm6,000 – “less than a clerk’s wage”. Another “scandal” involved the use of a corporate credit card which Mizzi used for hospitality expenses, management and office expenses after he stopped the payment of certain expenses through petty cash.
“Every payment made was supervised by the accountant … nothing underhand … Whenever I or my family members went abroad for personal travel, I always paid up front to Untours. I never accepted reductions and paid like every normal client.”
Attempts to get the comments of Secretary General Tony Zarb, Sammut and Mercieca proved futile yesterday as the three of them sent a standard reply by email referring to Zarb’s letter to Mizzi.
It is unclear what the other directors’ fate will be, given Sammut’s and Mercieca’s act of no-confidence in the company’s board made of Anthony Amaira, Robert Borg, Roberto Cristiano, Gaetano Dimech, and Michael Parnis.
In his reply to Mizzi’s letter, Tony Zarb said he was “disappointed” that he made allegations against Mercieca and Sammut, who were reserving their right to take action against him, and accused him of lacking credibility in bringing up his misgivings about Mercieca’s and Sammut’s displeasure at the Zammit disciplinary case.