Ominous rumblings

As expected, Tony Zarb and the hardliners have had an unequivocal victory. No magnanimity was shown at the moment of triumph. This was no contest between friends. The loser had to move out of the union. It has been reported that he will not even be allowed to write in the union's papers, not even to thank the 20 per cent who supported him.

This is no news. Others in the past who had different views of the political autonomy of the union or on its strategy and tactics were silenced, disgraced, discarded and chucked out. The list is impressive. It includes two secretary generals: Reggie Miller and Joe Attard Kingswell. Both wanted the union to appeal to a wider range of workers, whether their sympathies lay with the Labour Party or not.

Against this scenario one may ask what the General Workers' Union stands for. The sad fact is that most of the Nationalist Party's supporters left the union not only for political reasons but because they could realise better than their brainwashed Labour fellow members that the union was only serving the members' interests as a sideline, when it suited the Labour Party. Many of them paid dearly for their courage. They were openly and unabashedly refused overtime at the dockyard and the more audacious were beaten mercilessly.

Today, the union and even Alfred Sant openly admit that many union delegates are Labour delegates. Though two consecutive defeats for the MLP convinced the party that the marriage had been a millstone, they only went into the ritual of official divorce. It was all a sham. The two sides continued to cohabit. The union was as usual subservient. Do we not all remember that because reports commissioned by the Union were favourable towards membership of the EU they were suppressed so that the union could support the Labour's policy of rejection of the EU?

So there is nothing new. It's old hat. Even had Manwel Micallef triumphed, the union would have remained the MLP's poodle. Probably it would have regained a modicum of autonomy. As far as relations with the MLP go, it would have been a matter of style rather than substance. Its relations with the other unions could have improved the prospects of achievability of a TUC. Even a social pact would have become more possible with a union leadership having more confidence in itself.

On the industrial level, perhaps negotiating skill would have taken the upper hand on threats, brawn and muscle. After all what has the union or the workers gained by Mr Zarb's bombastic methods? The union's campaigns of taking to the streets all came a cropper. More pensioners than workers participated, a sure sign that the union is living in the past.

Don't we remember the airport fiasco? Or the Issa Daqshekk (Enough is enough) campaign? It was a government triumph. The message was returned to its sender. It was the union which was checkmated.

Mr Zarb and those around him, in their devoted allegiance to the MLP, are not realising that the economic scenario has changed since the 1980s. The dwindling down of large workplaces, such as the dockyard, has destroyed the union's old power bases. As our economy becomes more service-based and as the workforce becomes more educated there is no room for old-style militant unions. Tertiary education and the information revolution are empowering people to wage and win their own battles unaided by the unions. The old style of campaigning is dead.

And politically? It has been said that it suited the PN that the old guard has won. Mr Micallef could have given the GWU more credibility, at least until he would be forced to toe the party line, muzzled or thrown out. This has more than a grain of truth. The government has less to fear from a compromised leadership that has lost all its political and industrial campaigns, does not enjoy at least a modicum of trust by the other unions and has weakened its members' morale.

We have been told that the union is crumbling, that its reputed membership is grossly inflated and that its finances are in shambles. We are being told that the MLP, even if unofficially, took sides in the internal union elections. Nothing new either.

The situation was made worse for the union and the party by Dr Sant. How could he not realise that his statement that the GWU would always enjoy a privileged status would touch a raw nerve? It did bring back memories of the struggle of the free trade unions against the tyranny of his two predecessors underpinned by an accommodating GWU. Was it not, after all, under Dr Sant that the very existence of the Union Haddiema Maghqudin was threatened by a lawsuit that if lost would have put the union out of business? No wonder all free trade unions rose in one condemning chorus!

At first one could think this was an understandable faux pas in a moment of triumph. Yet, Dr Sant repeated it and even challenged the free unions to move to the left if they wanted to enjoy similar privileges.

In fact, this is more ominous than it looks. Post-1998 Dr Sant is no longer the fresh leader of the 1990s who liberated his party of the violent thugs. It was the rank and file first that blamed the 1998 electoral defeat on the premise that Labour had not looked after its own. Now this is far from the truth. Two examples from the Health Ministry will suffice. In 1997 transfers were given to over 125 employees in Mount Carmel Hospital alone. Have we forgotten that the courts confirmed that in 1998 someone had faked the signature of an interviewing board's member? Needless to say the most successful interviewees were all "red-eyed" boys.

Yet, Labour became fixated with this rationale. Many of the leaders took up the hue and cry. Eventually, Dr Sant himself began stating that his next Labour government would be different.

Dr Sant's utterance becomes explicable in this context. The next government led by Dr Sant will be no better than that of the dark days. It will be partisan and will necessarily have to defend its policy of discrimination against the free trade unions and the courts. Labour gangs will have to be resuscitated to defend such a policy successfully. The clock will be put back if we take Dr Sant lightly.

The PN has a duty to be vigilant and to warn the electorate of the ominous rumblings...

Dr Deguara is Minister of Health.