GWU 'will comply' with request for membership numbers audit

The General Workers' Union will comply with a request for a proper audit on union membership numbers, its secretary general said.

"If the director of industrial relations sends us a request for an audit, then I will have absolutely no problem in complying," Josef Bugeja said, when asked by MaltaToday.

Internal document figures recently published by MaltaToday show that the GWU's membership stood at just over 14,000 in 2014, a staggering 20,000 less than the figures it submitted in the latest Registrar of Trade Unions report.

The registrar's office, which acts as a unions watchdog and falls under the Department of Industrial Relations, has never carried out a proper audit to scrutinize union membership numbers.

Bugeja was speaking during a meeting with Union Haddiema Maghqudin secretary general Josef Vella at the UHM's Floriana offices.

The two union leaders adopted a friendly tone, both agreeing on the need to set up joint-union projects to help safeguard workers' health and safety.

Vella suggested that unions could have a proactive role to play in helping to prevent incidents like Saturday's stampede at a Paceville nightclub from reoccuring, and hit out at politicians for adopting a partisan approach to the matter.

"After the incident, I read reports on how politicians pointed out how people also suffered injuries under previous legislatures," he said, ostensibly referring to comments passed by Labour MP Deborah Schembri in Parliament on Monday. "The public is intelligent enough and deserves better from our political class."