This website is informed that General Workers’ Union officials contacted this morning dozens of Gozitan voters ostensibly to give them a “job interview”. Within minutes of these fake interviewers, these voters were offered a full-time permanent employment contract under the community work scheme run by the union. Dozens of contracts were signed on the spot and the new jobs are effective 5 April 2022.
The initiative is an obvious vote-grabbing exercise.
The community work scheme is operated by a company which is wholly owned by the GWU and is guaranteed public sector contracts by the government. The Union retains a profit margin after transferring the workers’ salaries paid entirely by the government.
In theory, the scheme is supposed to provide employment to people who are unable to find work for more than a year. These long-term unemployed are called in the jargon as “social cases,” or people who have no realistic hope of finding gainful employment.
But the people given unspecified permanent jobs at taxpayers’ expense this morning were not “social cases”. They weren’t unemployed at all.
Sources inform us that some of these new recruits were working casually up till now with the Gozo Ministry, hired through rolling 3-month contracts as “self-employed” service providers. The 3-month time limit keeps the cost of the contract below the maximum beyond which the Ministry would be required to seek authorisation for a direct order. The arrangement is insecure and does not amount to a permanent position in the public sector.
The cumbersome quarterly renewal has now been replaced with permanent employment through the community work scheme which is in effect a permanent government job.
Apart from these “service providers,” people who work in gainful employment elsewhere in private sector jobs were spotted this morning at Gozo’s Grand Hotel in Għajnsielem signing permanent contracts of employment with the GWU.
Sources tell us that since last January some 500 Gozitans in full-time private sector employment have registered under Jobsplus’s “Part 3” schedule behind their employers’ backs. Part 3 is a list of people who are in employment but are seeking an alternative job.
It appears that dozens of these people were today given a full-time job that comes into effect this coming 5 April. These people will be leaving their gainful private sector employment for these phantom public sector jobs.
Two months ago, Jobsplus officials briefed a Parliamentary committee that the GWU’s community work scheme currently employs about 1,000 people. Surprisingly 600 of these are Gozitan employees. Jobsplus officials told MPs that the scheme is reserved for people who have been unemployed for at least a year.
But this is not what appears to have happened this morning in Għajnsielem.