Updated | PN sues GWU over breach of contract for Valletta headquarters

'The General Workers' Union is breaking the law with the government's blessing and is raking in thousands as a result'

The GWU's Workers' Memorial Building in Valletta
The GWU's Workers' Memorial Building in Valletta

The Nationalist Party has sued the General Workers’ Union for breaching the conditions of a public contract that forbids them from renting out part of its Valletta headquarters to companies in which it is not a majority shareholder.

Shadow justice minister Jason Azzopardi said that the PN is seeking justice on behalf of the public, after the government refused to take action on the findings of a National Audit report.

“The General Workers’ Union is breaking the law with the government’s blessing, and is raking in thousands of euros as a result,” he told a press conference.

In 1957, the government granted the GWU the Workers’ Memorial Building on a perpetual emphyteusis as a site on which it can build its headquarters for trade union activities and its Union Press. A parliamentary resolution in 1997 amended the lease, allowing the union to rent our parts of the property to other companies – but only to those in which it is a majority shareholder.

However, a NAO report in 2015 found that the GWU had breached the conditions of its government lease when it rented out part of the building to state-owned utilities company ARMS and the Sciacca Grill steakhouse.

The PN last month filed a judicial protest to force the GWU to scrap its contracts with ARMS and Sciacca Grill, a move that the union decried as proof of the Opposition’s “boundless hatred” against it.

Azzopardi confirmed that neither the GWU nor the government had submitted a legal response to the PN’s judicial protest, which forced the Opposition to instigate legal proceedings. He warned that the court could not only declare the union’s rent deals null and void, but order that the entire parliamentary resolution be scrapped, and hence force the GWU to evict the Workers’ Memorial Building.

Opposition MP Ryan Callus said that the situation proves that there are “different laws for gods and animals”, an ancient Roman saying that was recently quoted by education minister Evarist Bartolo and has since been seized on as a slogan by the PN.

“It is unjust that, while the majority of the Maltese public respects the law, a large entity such as the GWU is allowed to breach it so blatantly with the government’s blessing,” he said.

‘Azzopardi has no credibility to preach about public land’ – Labour

The Labour Party dismissed the PN’s arguments, arguing that Azzopardi has no credibility to preach about public land as he is in the middle of a controversy surrounding the removal of the conditions of the emphyteusis of the former Lowenbrau factory in Qormi. 

“Anyone who visits Valletta will realize that the Workers’ Memorial Building is still the GWU’s headquarters. In contrast, there is no longer a brewery on the Qormu land as there should be according to the original conditions that were scandalously waived,” the PL said in a statement. “The Auditor General never condemned the government over the GWU case, but simply said that one must considering obtaining the court’s interpretation over a point of law, which the government is still in time to do and is considering. In the Lowenbrau case, the NAO had called on Azzopardi to shoulder responsibility for the miserly sum for which the previous government gave up the land”

“The GWU is renting out a small part of its building to the same entity [the government] that awarded it the emphyteusis in the first place, so that ARMS can provide an improved public service in a central location. In the Lowenbrau case, it was a businessman [Zaren Vassallo] who benefitted from a large tract of land that is now a commercial empire of supermarkets and shops.”