New dockyard collective agreement "a government priority"

The government is giving priority to concluding the collective agreement for dockyard workers so that the restructuring exercise at the shipyards may continue, Social Policy Minister Lawrence Gonzi told parliament yesterday.

Until new work practices were firmly in place and the "exaggerated" overtime bill was controlled, the yards could not arrive at a stage where they would not need subsidies, Dr Gonzi said.

He did not exclude that the yards would once more offer early retirement schemes to their workers, but said that the immediate priority was to raise efficiency and productivity and curb overtime.

Answering questions by Labour MP Evarist Bartolo, Dr Gonzi said that the last meeting of the task force on the shipyards was held on June 5 and a further meeting would be held tomorrow.

In answer to supplimentary questions by Mr Leo Brincat and Mr Joe Mizzi (MLP), the minister said that with immediate effect, MIMCOL would have a coordinating role in all collective agreement negotiations between the unions and those entities in which the government had a controlling share.

The management of the industrial concerns involved would still continue to be the primary negotiator. The MIMCOL unit, which would also include experts from the finance and social policy ministries, would start negotiations before collective agreements expired. It would make a prior evaluation of management proposals to gauge the impact these would have on the companies, both from the financial side and efficiency.

The Department of Labour and Industrial Relations would not be included in the negotiations so that its conciliatory role, under the new labour laws,would be safeguarded.

Meanwhile, answering a question by Mr Chris Agius (MLP), Investments Minister Austin Gatt said that 709 workers from Malta Drydocks (MDD) and 120 from Malta Shipbuilding (MSCL) had terminated their employment last year.