Prime Minister accuses Zarb of selling access to government

Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi has accused GWU secretary-general Tony Zarb of "selling access to government" when Labour was not even in power.

Gonzi, currently in Brussels negotiating Malta's financial allocation from the EU budget, was reacting to a recording broadcast by his party's media of Zarb speaking to a business operator in which he alludes to favouring companies whose employees are unionised, both for government tenders and in the union press.

The GWU said the recording is of Zarb speaking to a cleaning services contractor whose prices in government tenders meant his workers were underpaid, and that the GWU would put pressure on any government that gives tenders contractors whose employees are paid at below the national minimum wage.

In comments to the press in Brussels, Gonzi said he was "shocked" at Zarb's words as they were carried in the edited recording broadcast by PN organs.

Gonzi claimed that Zarb was "interfering" in a government's tendering process when Labour was not even in power yet, and said Opposition leader Joseph Muscat's own reaction to the recording stopped short of condemnation.

"Tony Zarb should resign. Instead of defending workers, he is taking a partisan approach," Gonzi said.

Earlier in the day, Muscat said that nobody had the right to speak for a new government. "Policies are made by this party, as approved in our manifesto," he said during a presentation of the PL candidates.

On its part, the GWU said the 'secret' recording was an edited conversation of an exchange that took place in mid-2012 between Zarb and a contractor, over precarious employment. The GWU said it had received reports of unfair treatment from employees of a prominent cleaning contractor, who was submitting offers for cleaning services to the government at prices showing his workers would be paid at rates below the national minimum wage.

"The GWU tried to negotiate for better working conditions for employees of the contractor but it was evident that the good will to improve the employee's working conditions was lacking on the part of the contractor. It was in this stated context that the GWU newspapers reported that the contractor's employees were being exploited," the GWU said in a statement.