GWU boss warns employers over precarity

Employers were today warned to stop taking workers for a ride because they would regret it. In a stern warning to companies employing care workers, General Workers Union secretary-general said the union would not stand silent in front of abusive working conditions.

Employers who abuse of their workers by imposing precarious conditions would either have to change their ways or 'face the GWU's wrath," Zarb said.

Zarb hit out at employers who referred to care workers on their books as bicca care worker.' "This is unacceptable and completely condemnable."

Playing around with workers' rights is no longer allowed. Enough is enough. Whoever thinks that care workers are gullible and buffoons is disillusioned," Zarb said to the applause of the section members and shop stewards.

Addressing members at the end of the annual conference of the union's public sector section this morning, Zarb called on government to stand firm and blacklist companies which continued employing people in precarious conditions.

The GWU boss also thanked family and social solidarity minister Marie Louise Coleiro Preca and health minister Godfrey Farrugia for attending to a number of meetings organised by the union for care workers.

He thanked the ministers for listening to the care workers' plight and urged government to take concrete action in the struggle against precarity.

Zarb, who confirmed that he would relinquish his post on reaching retirement age in two years time, criticised the Chamber for Small and Medium Enterprises director general Vince Farrugia for refusing to attend a meeting at the Malta Council for Economic and Social Development that will discuss precarious work.

This week, Farrugia said the chamber would boycott MCESD meetings because they were an "orchestrated attack on small businesses."

Zarb said that Farrugia was boycotting the meetings after describing workers under precarious conditions as "rats." These accusations surfaced following an MCESD meeting in 2011 and since then the GWU and GRTU are embroiled in a series of libel suits.

At the beginning of his address, Zarb reminded the union members that 14 years ago, union officials were arraigned in court after backing workers who were on strike at the Malta airport.

"That was a black day for the workers' movement, they had threatened to imprison me and my colleagues for seven years, actions which were condemned by hundreds of unions around the globe. We can forgive but we will never forget those events," a bellicose Zarb said.

He also thanked the confirmed section secretary Josef Bugeja for the sterling work carried out in the past two years, during which the government and public entities section faced hostile ministers but played an important role in securing a collective agreement for the public service employees.  

"The General Workers Union is here to stay and we will always put workers and pensioners first and foremost," Zarb said.