Making industry competitive

The social pact conceived by the Union Haddiema Maghqudin is nothing but a buzzword and anyone who believes the social partners will one day agree to it needs to have his head examined.

Only Dom Mintoff had the guts to take a step to make this island competitive, when he trimmed public holidays. The General Workers' Union was then tight-lipped. When the constitutional 50 per cent +1 amendment was passed, all the sides wanted their own public holiday - they did not care about competitiveness then.

If industry becomes competitive, the worker would be the first to reap the benefits as jobs will be created and placed on a sound footing.

First of all, trimming public holidays is a must. If needs be, workers will be compensated for them. There must be no more than one public holiday a month. Last month there were three: Production planning goes haywire, with overtime having to be performed to make up for the loss of production. Many foreign investors I know are sick of this happening and some consider Malta as uncompetitive. I quite agree.

Then there is the question of abuse of sick leave, another hot potato. It is unfair that the first three days have to be borne by the employer. Who gets the NI premiums? And what about changing the whole system so that petty conditions such as a sore throat or the common cold, or sickness of less than a week's duration, cannot be claimed? From experience, most employees report sick after a weekend, having spent a lot of time in a pub making themselves sick, and then employers have to pay for it by paying them sick leave and making up for the lost work by having other employees do overtime, hence the additional cost.

If these two matters are taken up, or some government assumes some Mintoffian stance and does what is necessary, it will make us competitive.

And while I am at it, I inform those who assume their employers are getting rich at their cost, that industrialists borrow a lot of money at high interest and usually pledge all their possessions to the bank in order to start up a business. If anything goes wrong, they stand to lose even their house.

I have no doubt about the result of a referendum on public holidays, since nobody is prepared to give and take. The unions only want to take, take, take...