Unions watchdog carries no audit on membership numbers

The Registrar of Trade Unions has never carried out a proper audit on union membership and is currently in the process of recruiting inspectors which would allow it to scrutinise the information provided by unions.

Last week, MaltaToday published figures from an internal document showing that the General Workers’ Union’s membership stood at just over 18,000 in 2014, a staggering 29,000 less than the figures it submitted in the latest Registrar of Trade Unions report.

Asked for a reaction, the GWU told MaltaToday that it had nothing to add to what union boss Josef Bugeja told MaltaToday last week, when the freshly elected secretary-general said the figures provided to the registrar were “real.”

“The numbers cannot be inflated because they are audited and checked against the records provided by employers,” Bugeja said.

But in comments to MaltaToday, the registrar said “to date no general inspections on union membership have been carried out, however one has to keep in mind that at present the Department is in the process of recruiting additional inspectors.”

Read the full story in today’s edition of MaltaToday