In 2012, after Gejtu Vella retired as general secretary of the Union Ħaddiema Magħqudin and formed his own private consultancy firm, he was assigned a lucrative contract to provide industrial relations consultancy to the health ministry.

At that time, Vella was touted as a potential electoral candidate for the then ruling Nationalist Party.

Eyebrows were raised over Vella’s contract, particularly since his duties were already carried out by civil servants in the health department.

Fast forward 10 years to 2022. This time, it was the turn of the Labour government to handpick a hard-core Labourite and ex-General Workers’ Union official for the position of adviser on industrial relations for the same health ministry.

Jeremy Camilleri, ex-secretary of the Government and Public Entities Section of the GWU, who resigned after his relationship with the union turned sour, found himself on the government’s payroll in a position of trust.

The Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses declared that Camilleri’s appointment rendered senior government officials within the health department irrelevant and was simply a reward for his assistance to the Labour Party during last year’s elections.

This was a replica of Vella’s award of a contract on a silver platter under a Nationalist government.

MUMN president Paul Pace showed consistency when he objected to the presence of both Vella and Camilleri during official meetings involving his union.

During a recent Times of Malta podcast, Camilleri lamented over his woes and pains when (sic) he discovered that top GWU officials (whom he did not have the guts to identify) were putting the interests of the Labour Party, big business and the union itself over those of GWU members and Maltese workers.

Here one might ask Camilleri whether he had done anything seven years ago when his union was given a government tender to administer the community work scheme from which it earned €300 each month for each person that it took from Jobsplus, pocketing €8.5 million, while these individuals were exploited by being placed on a minimum wage and paid less than their work colleagues for the same work.

Such precarious work was called shameful by Archbishop Charles Scicluna and rightly so.

Camilleri has shown hypocrisy when he complained that the GWU did business with the management of a company whose workers it was supposed to defend and then vouched to continue to embrace and treasure the union’s principles in his letter of resignation from the union.

Despite having admitted that Labour rendered itself subservient to big businesses while corruption flourished under a Labour government, Camilleri continued to militate in its favour. That the GWU is in bed with the Labour is manifest.

In the 1970s, the GWU resembled one of the fascist trade unions operating under Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. It became statutorily fused with Dom Mintoff’s Labour Party and together they carried out an onslaught on other trade unions by forming action committees to break legitimate industrial actions that were taken against a deterioration in working conditions imposed by the government itself.

Since Labour regained power in 2013, the GWU has been largely on the government’s side and rarely stood up for workers employed with government authorities. It has been accused of betrayal by Air Malta staff and remained silent before the fraudulent deal involving three state hospitals.

Since Labour regained power in 2013, the GWU rarely stood up for workers with government authorities- Denis Tanti

As for the UĦM, its ties with the PN may not have been so evident. Doubts have however been publicly raised by other trade unions that it was placed in a privileged position by past Nationalist governments.

During my 14 years as vice president of the UĦM, between 1980 and 1994, it was evident that certain union officials were very careful not to tread on the PN’s toes, even when the member’s interests were at stake.

I recall how all hell broke loose against me in November 1992 when I openly protested during a university graduation ceremony about an unmerited degree received by a Nationalist MP.

Within a couple of months, my release from the public service to perform full-time union duties was terminated and, subsequently, an extraordinary general union conference was summoned to discuss a motion calling for my removal from office.

In the rush to hold the conference, the statutory one-month prior notice period was done away with while several other statutory provisions were flagrantly breached.

During the conference, union officials delivered politically loaded speeches insinuating that I had been giving information to a particular Labour MP, without specifying what the information was, with the clear intention of turning the delegates against me.

My position was finally vindicated by a civil court judgment on February 7, 2005, which ruled that the decision taken by the union conference to remove me from office was null and void.

However, the ordeal was not over. On August 5, 1995, I was vindictively transferred from my place of work and had, once again, to resort to the courts.

My position was once again vindicated on November 16, 2004, when the court of appeal ruled that the transfer was a form of retaliation against me and constituted an illegitimate punishment.

In 1996, the MUMN was formed as an offspring of the Malta Union of Midwives that extended its membership to nurses. Nurses resigned en masse from the GWU and the UĦM to join the MUMN that, consequently, took the UĦM’s place as the union representing the majority of employees in the nursing profession.

Being a nurse, I accepted to humbly provide my guidance and counsel as the union’s industrial consultant during its initial years.

Nurses realised that it pays to belong to a trade union that truly has its members’ interests at heart, rather than a puppet trade union subservient to a political party.

Denis Tanti is a former assistant director at the health ministry.