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CAMPAIGN FOR NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE

Was, is and shall remain in favour of Maltese workers

and against Malta's membership of the European Union

WE SWEAR TO FREE MALTA FROM THE SLAVERY, COLONIALISM AND DICTATORIAL ILLEGAL EUROPEAN UNION RULE

TELL YOUR PARLIAMENTARY DEPUTY THAT YOU WANT MALTA TO REGAIN INDEPENDENCE AND FREEDOM

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The European Union was extremely harsh with the Maltese people when in Malta’s Membership Treaty in the European Union, signed in Athens, on 16 April 2003,

* ordered that the Malta Shipyards do not carry out work more than 2.4 million man-hours every year,

* cannot build ships in a year with more than a total of 10,000 tons,

* that the Bormla Dock Number 1 be closed for at least ten years

* and that the workers on productive work be reduced to 1,410.

It is a fitting question that is asked on why the European Union dictated to the Maltese Government all these harsh conditions about the Shipyards to accept its application for Union membership.

The excuse that was given was that these conditions were part of the Shipyards restructuring plan, spread over a seven-year period.

The seven years started on January 2002, although the Union Membership Treaty had to come into effect on 1 May 2004.

The European Union also fixed the amount of government financial aid that could be given to the Maltese Shipyards up to the end of 2008, and decided that afterwards, no more aid can be given.

As a result

* of the 2003 Membership Treaty,

* hundreds of workers were discharged from the Shipyards,

* and hundreds of other workers were sent out on pension,

* or took an amount of money to leave their employment.

With them

* was lost a patrimony of hundreds of years of experience in the repair and building of ships

* and the destruction of a great heritage of trades and technical abilities.

What the European Union decided for the Maltese Shipyards crippled them, instead of helping them.

In January this year Engineer Lawrence Ciantar, who was trained in the Shipyard for many years and for many years managed Enemalta, apart from other posts that he occupied, thus wrote about the Union plan for the Malta Shipyard.

“The so-called ‘restructuring programme’ was nothing except an exercise of workers reduction to reduce the current expenditure.

No investment in modern tools and machinery to increase the efficiency and quality of work.

No workers’ training was made in new technology and particularly in management.

The reduction in apprentices’ entries, so much required for the Shipyard to develop, greatly weakened the Shipyard potential for the coming years.

On the contrary, the Shipyard management was effectively passed into foreign management hands.

Apart from this, some of the contracts that were won by the Shipyard were passed on to foreign contractors, who employed foreign workers with them.

Thus, these contractors benefitted from the profits, and the work experience also went out of the country, while the Shipyard suffered losses on the contracts.

This situation had a strong negative impact on the moral of the Maltese workers.” 

This write up by Engineer Ciantar accuses both the European Union that imposed the plan on the Shipyards and the Maltese Government for accepting it.

Now

* that the plan appears not to have succeeded in making the Shipyard not incur losses,

* they are putting the blame on the lack of workers productivity,

* and not on the lack of capacity

* and mismanagement of the management,

* mistaken and treacherous Government policy,

* and the disastrous agreement imposed upon it by the European Union.

The greatest sacrilege of the agreement about the Maltese Shipyards are the limits that it makes on the number of productive workers, on the amount of work that can be made every year, and the closure of the dock.

Instead of trying to bring work for the Shipyard as much as we can, we ended up refusing work.

Instead of employing as many Maltese workers as possible, we ended up employing foreign workers, who amounted up to 800 in a year.

Instead of making use of the dock facilities that we have, in a scandalous and irresponsible manner we closed one of them for ten years.

When the Government bragged that it had written off the Drydocks and Shipbuilding debt,

* it did not tell the people that it

* had acquired without any payment the property of docks,

* quays,

* workshops,

* machinery,

* plant,

* tools,

* cranes

* and the capacity in trade

* and work experience of the 1,410 productive workers that it kept in employment.

Government representatives cover their incompetence all the time by painting a bad picture of the Shipyard workers, instead of encouraging them and increasing their moral.

They make the public believe that it would be better not to have the burden of helping the Shipyard, while on the contrary it is in the interest of the Maltese people to continue protecting the mine of tradesmen that the nation so much needs at all times.

There are two points that the European Union and those who serve it in our country insist upon about the Shipyard.

One is that the Union does not permit state aid to be given to commercial companies because it is against the rules of free market competition.

The second point is that the country should not carry the burden of financial aid that is given to a company to operate.

Those who sustain these two points are not right.

Neither

* the market competition rules

* nor the burden of financial aid on the people

* overcome the social and economic advantages

* not to destroy the heritage of the trade of ship repair

* and shipbuilding in our country, and

* not to allow the closure of the best school in our country for technical and tradesmen training,

* as well as not utilizing the great useful facilities of the docks and

* quays that our country had invested so much money to build them.

If we want to evade the confrontation with the European Union on state aid to the Shipyard commercial company, we can choose two roads.

We can count the Shipyard as a workshop for the practical training of trades that our youths are instructed in at the College of Science and Technology at Kordin, and for this training the Shipyard will be paid by the Department of Education.

We can also not allow the Shipyard to remain a commercial company and absorb it as a government department, such as the Public Works Department and its workshops sections.

Thus, the 1,410 Shipyard workers become government employees and will be counted with the more than the 30,000 workers and employees that the Government has working with it.

This step would not mean that the Government will have to pay 1,410 more wages.

It means that it will pay not more than 352 more wages, if one calculates that between the Shipyard income and expenditure, there will be an unbalance of an amount of money equivalent to three quarters of all the wages of the 1,410 Shipyard workers.

Thus with an additional expense equivalent to 352 wages, the Government saves having to pay a greater amount in unemployment benefit and social assistance to 1,410 workers.

Even financially it will be better for the people that the Shipyard becomes a government department, apart from the enormous social and industrial advantages for our country that the Shipyard workers remain employed in their work.

After all, the Shipyard is part of the National Patrimony.

Those who today want to change what is provided by the Constitution of Malta on neutrality probably did not agree with it when we introduced it in the Constitution in 1987.

They are bragging that they are modern and progressive.

They do not realize that there is nothing modern and progressive in countries taking part in wars.

Countries have been doing so since antiquity and not because they are progressive, but because they are aggressive.

They tell us that in the present circumstances it is not better for our country to be neutral.

They do not realize that today, when many people from the rest of the world are hostile to the Western block, we will prevent that they will be against us if they see us not militarily aligned with the West.

They are insisting that membership in the European Union does not allow our country to remain neutral.

They forget that prior to the membership referendum the Union leaders and their puppets in our country assured the people that the neutrality according to the Constitution is not against membership in the European Union and that therefore there will be no need for it to be changed.

If we revise the provision of the Constitution on neutrality, we must make it stronger and more restrictive, introduce the clear right that a case can be filed against the Government if it takes any step that breaches the neutrality as there is whenever a human right is breached.

If we really want to be progressive, we must introduce into the Constitution that we have to work for general disarmament, for the destruction of weapons of mass destruction and deny the use of military force in relations between peoples.

Thursday 17 April, 2008

WE WANT INDEPENDENCE FROM THE EUROPEAN UNION

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