The vote on the GWU premises

According to the GWU, the government decision allowing it to rent part of its premises to commercial organisations was ‘a victory for the workers’.

Josef Bugeja, the GWU general secretary, was quoted in the GWU daily, l-orizzont, saying that this momentous victory will be long remembered in history!

This is how Bugeja describes a circumstance in which the GWU had to bow to pressure to observe the law.

Last Monday, the House of Representatives approved a resolution allowing for a change in the conditions of the lease for the land on which the GWU developed its headquarters. The change in condition allows part of the property to be let for commercial reasons. The original contract – which was made by a Labour administration so many years ago – did not allow this.

It is to be noted that the site leased to the GWU by the government is of significant value.

Bugeja described the change in conditions to allow the GWU to do what it had already been doing in breach of the ground rent contract as ‘a victory’. The logic behind this take is unfathomable.

So, after breaching the conditions of the contract, the GWU describes it ‘a historic victory’ because the government agreed to change the original contract to sanction its breach of the contract!

Imagine if an employer was in breach of some collective agreement with the GWU. The GWU would actually behave the opposite of the way it behaved when it breached its contract. It would rightly protest and declare a trade dispute with the employer. It seems that Josef Bugeja thinks that the opposite applies when it is the GWU that breaches the conditions of a contract.

In my dictionary, a ‘victory’ is a win. In Bugeja’s dictionary a ‘victory’ means acquiescence when one is at fault.

The truth is that the Nationalist Party was not prepared to allow the GWU to ignore its contractual obligations. The Nationalist Party – then led by Simon Busuttil – opted to go to court on the issue. Whether this was the correct political stance in the circumstances is debatable. But there is no doubt that it was the GWU that flagrantly breached the conditions of the contract of the lease of the land.

The court decision did not agree that the GWU had to vacate its premises – as requested by the PN - but agreed that the commercial leases were in breach of the conditions by which the GWU was granted the lease of the land.

The so-called historical victory of the GWU was its acquiescence that it had breached the contract with the government and also its accepting to pay back part of the money it received in the past and was going to receive in the future for the parts that were leased to third parties for commercial uses.

According to the new contract, the GWU has to pay government almost €2 million – a figure that was calculated by an independent assessor. Even so, the bigger part of the building would still only be used by the GWU for its trade union activities.

It is incredible how Bugeja described the manner by which he steered the GWU out of a mess of its own making!

In my opinion – and from my experience – the GWU is a serious responsible trade union so long as it acts as a genuine trade union, fighting for the rights of its members.

However, it also has an invisible switch that turns everything on its head when an issue becomes political, rather than one concerning workers’ rights.

Death of a motorcyclist

Tony Galea, president of a motorcycle advocacy group – Two Wheels Foundation – has expressed his anger at the perceived negligence of the authorities which, he says, led to the death of a biker last week.

Dieter Vink, 54, died two days after crashing his motorcycle into a skip positioned illegally on the final curve of the St Paul’s Bay bypass before the Xemxija roundabout.

The Two Wheels Foundation represents motorcyclists through its promotion of safety awareness. Writing on Facebook, Galea said: “A chimpanzee would have known that dumping a skip in the middle of an arterial road around a blind corner would create a major risk to motorists.”

Galea was reported saying he was sick of going to funerals. “It feels like our lives are cheap,” he said, mentioning the deaths of Johanna Boni, after being hit by a truck in 2015, and Marie Claire Lombardi, who lost control of her bike after it skidded on olives spilled onto the road in 2022.

Galea also said it had become more dangerous to drive on Malta’s roads over the past four or five years.

I wonder how Galea missed mentioning the food couriers that seem to enjoy dangerous driving when delivering food on motorcycles. In this case, I think it is these motorcyclists who have become the most dangerous phenomenon on Malta’s roads. Traffic signs, it seems, are there to be ignored. They overtake cars and lorries either from the left or from the right side, as it suits them.

Where does the Two Wheels Foundation stand on these dangerous bikers?

Undemocratic stance

A Labour Party press release after the final vote on the budget last Monday, said that the vote showed the clear difference between the government who is on the people’s side and the Opposition that is against the people.

This is a shocking comment that flagrantly ‘reduces’ parliamentary democracy into a tussle between the people and the enemies of the people.

In any parliamentary democracy, a budget vote is considered as a vote of confidence in the government. The Opposition’s vote against the budget signifies that it has no confidence in the government – a normal stance taken by whoever is in Opposition. When the Labour Party was in Opposition it voted against the budget, as it was expected to do, after all.

No one who really believes in democracy interprets the Opposition’s negative vote on the budget as a vote against the people. Only undemocratic regimes do so.

This must have come from the extreme left element within the Labour Party that Robert Abela seems unable to control.

I cannot understand how the Nationalist Party did not react to this obscenity.