General Workers Union boss insists membership figures are ‘real’

The General Workers Union has lost a sizeable chunk of members in a clear sign that its former secretary-general Tony Zarb has presided over a declining membership.

Unlike most industrialised countries, union membership as a whole in Malta has steadily increased in recent years, although sources have also claimed that official statistics can be outdated or even inflated by individual unions.

But membership figures seen by MaltaToday and published today show that the General Workers’ Union – Malta’s biggest trade union – has lost some 6,000 members in just over eight years.

An internal document leaked membership to MaltaToday shows that GWU membership stood at just over 18,000 in 2014, a staggering 24% decline from the union’s membership eight years earlier.

The figures seen by MaltaToday belie statistics provided by the union to the Registrar of Trade Unions, which in the 2012/3 annual report put the number of GWU members at 46,831. 

However, the union’s freshly elected secretary-general Josef Bugeja reassured MaltaToday that the official statistics are neither inflated nor outdated, adding that the numbers published by the registrar are “real.” 

This corroborates previous claims by Bugeja’s predecessor Tony Zarb who in December 2014 said that 3,377 new members joined the GWU over the previous 11 months.

“The numbers cannot be inflated because they are audited and checked against the records provided by employers,” Bugeja said, adding that the statistics are verified by the registrar every year. 

Confirming that union’s membership stood at around 47,000, Bugeja explained that the figures cannot be tampered because these are checked against information provided by the private sector and government. 

However, the union’s freshly elected secretary-general Josef Bugeja reassured MaltaToday that the official statistics are neither inflated nor outdated, adding that the numbers published by the registrar are “real.” 

This corroborates previous claims by Bugeja’s predecessor Tony Zarb who in December 2014 said that 3,377 new members joined the GWU over the previous 11 months.

“The numbers cannot be inflated because they are audited and checked against the records provided by employers,” Bugeja said, adding that the statistics are verified by the registrar every year. 

Confirming that union’s membership stood at around 47,000, Bugeja explained that the figures cannot be tampered because these are checked against information provided by the private sector and government. 

Union members employed in the public sector have their membership fee deducted directly from their wages, while members in the public service normally pay their fees directly to the union. 

The unofficial figures show that the GWU is stronger in the public sector than in the private sector. But one sector were the union suffered a clear haemorrhage of members is the ports and dockyards which have been privatised in recent years. 

The privatisation of the Malta Dockyards in 2010, which for years was the GWU’s impenetrable fortress, dealt the union a blow in terms of members and militancy. 

According to the figures seen by MaltaToday, following the transfer of the dry docks to the Italian private firm Palumbo, the union’s metal and construction section lost some 2,000 members. 

Moreover the same figures show that the union suffered a haemorrhage in all sectors including its retired persons section and the youth branch, which was created in 2010. 

The unofficial statistics also indicate that the union suffered other significant declines in its maritime and aviation section with a loss of 600 members, with the union suffering a similar loss in its chemical and energy sector. 

According to the figures provided in the registrar’s report, the GWU’s rival union Union Haddiema Maghqudin had 26,103 members in 2012/3. The third largest union is the Malta Union of Teachers, which according to the report has almost 8,000 members. 

The GWU, which perennially claims to be the largest in Malta, first provided figures to the registrar in 2001/2, with the report putting the union’s membership at 47,653.

The internal document leaked to MaltaToday shows a sharp decline in the union’s membership

Malta bucks the trend 

In recent years, union membership has dwindled in most European countries but Malta is one of the few countries which has registered a growth.

In most industrial countries union membership has been falling sharply but this is not the case in Malta, as figures provided by the Registrar of Trade Unions show that union membership is increasing year-on-year. Yet, this growth has not kept pace with the overall growth in employment, meaning that union density has drifted downwards. 

The most recent report from 2012/3 shows that 31 registered trade unions had 91,576 members while employers’ associations had 9,084 members. 

Union membership increased by 2,396 over the previous year while employers’ association membership dropped by 363. 

In the registrar’s first ever report published in 1991/2, union membership stood at 71,057 but this did not include GWU members as the union only started providing membership information in 2001/2. 

This growth is mainly down to the increase in pensioner membership and if these members are excluded from the figures, the overall growth does not match the growth in employment. Union density in Malta has fallen slightly from 53% in 1996 to 51% in 2012. 

As in most European countries, Malta has several competing unions, often divided on political grounds, although nowadays ideological differences are less accentuated than in the past.