MUBE block vote fails to upstage GWU members from BOV Foundation

The BOV Foundation was set up in 1990’s by GWU, MUBE and Government. It is managed by a three-member board of trustees. The Foundation manages many BoV shares on behalf of workers.

The Foundation then pays out employees a substantial sum of money upon reaching retirement age.

In recent years, MUBE members did not participate in the election for the three members of the BoV Foundation. No member of MUBE ever involved themselves or contested. Thus in the past few years, all trustees were GWU members.

Suddenly, this year MUBE created a 3-person block vote. The MUBE candidates were Vanessa Borg; Steve Schranz; John Cassar Torregiani to eliminate the present GWU members from the Board.

“They could have ran 2 or 1 person had they wanted otherwise,” sources told MaltaToday. “As promoting three meant eliminating others intentionally,” these sources added.

One of the trustees who was running for the BOV Foundation elections was the actual BOV Chairman’s foundation. “So clearly the intent was to remove the existing trustees,” the sources claimed.

MUBE then announced a block vote in which it attacked foundation trustees.

On its part, the GWU insisted there was “no room for block voting in Foundation” and told workers to boycott MUBE’s block vote.

The 3 other candidates were all GWU members. Another one was an active Union committee member.

MUBE maintained the block vote in its further circulars.

On Tuesday 24 August 2010, the possibility to register proxies closed. The MUBE block vote collected a total of 227 proxies. The other three GWU candidates collected 770 proxies.

A few hours prior to the election, the three MUBE candidates withdrew their candidature together, MaltaToday has learnt. The decision was taken due to the great lack of support.

At the election, the other three candidates were elected as Trustees of the BoV foundation. The AGM took place Friday 27 August 2010 as part of the AGM.

In a statement, the GWU’s Professionals, Finance and Services’ Section congratulated the newly-elected Bank employees to the posts of members of the Board of Trustees of the BoV employees’ Foundation this Friday.

The GWU in its statement lamented that unfortunately the election, which was normally held between Bank employees who ran independently, “was controversially affected by an attempt by the MUBE to promote a block vote of three specific candidates that were presented through MUBE circulars and initiatives to be promoted amongst Bank employees as endorsed candidates”.

This initiative also implied “the intent to remove existing Trustees seeking re-election without consideration of the valid work done by Trustees in the past years for all Bank employees,” the GWU insisted in its statement.

Fortunately, “the maturity of Bank employees prevailed and on the close of submission of proxies it was evident that the block vote initiative failed drastically,” the GWU claimed in its statement.

The GWU explained that the other three candidates “were elected automatically, notwithstanding that they already held the support of the overwhelming absolute majority of proxies of eligible voters”.

“This was a strong message by Bank employees that there is no room for block voting in an autonomous Bank foundation and also proved that Bank employees rejected the promoted block vote of MUBE,” the GWU concluded its statement.