“We have been preparing for Air Malta job cuts for years”, Josef Bugeja, GWU secretary general, commented about the shock announcement that Air Malta will shed half its workforce.
Clearly then, the GWU knew all along what was going on. It knew that Konrad Mizzi was duping the workers.
Mizzi had bragged that Air Malta was “another success story” and that “Air Malta will be a very different airline by the next election” because of “its growth strategy”. Mizzi said the company made €1.2 million profit – in fact it lost €13m.
He bragged that Air Malta added 21 routes. Finance Minister Clyde Caruana conceded that “every time a plane flew to any destination it resulted in a loss for the company”.
Mizzi cruelly fuelled the false hopes of airline workers. He deceived them into believing his lies about the company’s booming prospects. Yet he knew the company was on its deathbed.
From Bugeja’s words, so did the GWU. Instead of alerting its members to the imminent calamity, the GWU colluded with its silence.
That’s no surprise. The GWU has been raking in millions at the workers’ cost. It sold out to Labour’s government. Its leaders, Josef Bugeja and Victor Carachi, are not going to oppose their benefactor and jeopardise their earnings to defend dispensable workers.
Soon after Labour’s election, the GWU leased part of its Valletta premises to ARMS Ltd. That property didn’t belong to the GWU. It was government owned. The GWU not only benefitted from use of public property but also profited out of taxpayers’ funds.
The commissioner for lands informed the GWU general secretary that a parliamentary resolution was necessary to allow the lease. The general secretary maintained that “the pertinent authorities were aware” and the lease should be allowed. The GWU was in breach of contract. The National Audit Office found irregularities and recommended legal action against the GWU.
Of course, no legal action was taken. Arrogantly the GWU secretary general refused to reply to any NAO correspondence.
He refused to divulge who “the pertinent authorities” were.
In May 2014, media reports predicted the GWU was set to earn €500,000 annually by leasing its property in A3 towers to Transport Malta. A GWU company, Paola Estates Ltd, had bought the basement and first two floors in shell form for €1.74 million. The directors of Paola Estates were then secretary general Tony Zarb and president Victor Carachi.
Several bids were submitted to Transport Malta. Six were shortlisted. As anticipated, GWU was selected despite the fact that the GWU property was in shell form.
A minimum condition was that the property would be “ready by September 2014”. The deadline was missed. But Minister Joe Mizzi defended the GWU and reassured the public the property would be ready by September 2015. Several missed deadlines later, the property was completed, in June 2016. But Transport Malta still paid the GWU while waiting to move in.
James Piscopo, Transport Malta head and former Labour Party CEO, turned down freedom of information requests to publish the GWU contract. The minister refused similar requests in parliament. It was far too damaging to reveal that the GWU would earn, in just four years, more than it paid for the whole property.
The GWU betrayed its very soul, the worker, for 30 pieces of silver- Kevin Cassar
The GWU’s biggest scoop came through direct exploitation of workers. In January 2016 it won a five-year concession to run the Jobsplus scheme for the unemployed. The scheme’s stated aim was to train long-term unemployed to secure productive employment in the private sector. The scheme was meant to be run by a GWU nonprofit foundation.
Instead, just 14 days after winning the concession, the GWU set up a for-profit company, District Operations Ltd, to run the scheme. The GWU had a majority shareholding, but another company, called District One Ltd, was the minority shareholder. That company, registered on the same day, was owned by Aron Mifsud Bonnici, Konrad Mizzi’s personal lawyer, and Robert Borg, the GWU financial controller.
Borg also owned BED Ltd, a financial vehicle linked to the Labour Party that would allegedly receive up to €200,000 from 17 Black owner Yorgen Fenech. The two were the directors of District Operations Ltd together with GWU president Victor Carachi, general secretary Josef Bugeja and deputy general secretary Kevin Camilleri.
In 2018 alone the company registered €1.2 million in “administrative expenses”.
Between 2017 and 2018 directors’ fees almost trebled to €46,600. Other board members received €32,400.
Carachi refused to answer questions. So did Bugeja. The scheme was meant to cater for 625 people, but the numbers continued to rise, and so did GWU profits.
The scheme did not help anybody secure employment in the private sector. It was just a scam intended to funnel millions into the GWU. At the same time the government could falsely claim that unemployment had fallen and that those recruited to the GWU’s scheme were employed in the private sector.
The truth was that workers on the scheme did not turn up for work, or simply punched in and left soon after. The rest spent the day “doing close to nothing”. The GWU made over €8.5 million over the five years of the concession. When Archbishop Charles Scicluna called the deal shameful, Kurt Farrugia swiftly waded in to defend the GWU, accusing the archbishop of having a “malicious attitude”.
When the contract expired, the new contract conditions were tailor-made for the GWU. Unsurprisingly, in September 2021, the seven-year contract, worth €109 million, was again awarded to the GWU, despite a vastly cheaper competing bid.
If that weren’t enough, Labour appointed Carachi a director at Malita Investments, a state company, and paid him €10,000 annually. Labour also gave him a consultancy at MIMCOL, worth another €12,500 annually. When challenged about the blatant conflict of interest, Carachi refused to answer.
The GWU betrayed its very soul, the worker, for 30 pieces of silver. It conspires with Labour, once the workers’ party, to exploit the worker, undermine their working conditions and rob them of dignity.
Now the GWU has sacked its loyal l-Orizzont editor Victor Vella for irking Labour by publishing stories on workers’ rights and social injustice.