Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1445232
6 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 23 JANUARY 2022 OPINION IF it feels like we have been hear- ing about the demise of Air Mal- ta for years, it is because we have. In a recent comment he gave to the media, the airline's Ex- ecutive Chairman David Curmi said, "In the last restructuring plan approved by the European Commission in 2012 there were the same exact number of peo- ple who were supposed to be made redundant. Over the last ten years the redundancies did not happen and now we do not have another chance. This is the last chance to save it." In the previous year, 2011, Air Malta was in the middle of a restructuring programme that saw the Maltese government subsidise the airline to cover its €50 million in losses, sack key executives including the CEO and plan a radical downsizing of the airline. But the downsizing never happened. We can go back even further than that, thanks to the con- venience of Google search at our fingertips. In 2007 the pi- lots were already in a dispute with then Nationalist Minister Austin Gatt over pay cuts. The negotiations, threats from both sides and ensuing deadlock went on for years and the issue finally came to a head in 2020 when COVID struck and tour- ism came to a standstill. The chop came swift and brutally: 108 pilots who had refused to take a cut in their take home pay were sacked. If we rewind even further, in 2004, Minister Gatt was in talks with the unions on how they could recoup the millions the airline was losing without hav- ing to let employees go. One report said that, "Among the immediate measures, overtime is to be severely curtailed and allowances reduced across the board… The company is already trying to make internal chang- es to its management and the number of group heads will be reduced from 26 to eight." In fact, it is hard to remember the last time Air Malta was truly profitable. Despite all the brag- ging by (former Minister) Kon- rad Mizzi, it was all smoke and mirrors because the slight profit when he was Minister was due to the selling off of the compa- ny's main assets. The losses of the national airline were put in- to perspective by the current Fi- nance Minister Clyde Caruana in Parliament a few months ago when he pointed out that Air Malta has gone through €435 million over the past 15 years, or €29 million a year. If that is not an obscene amount of money down the drain I don't know what is. No private company would have been able to survive so long with losses of that scale. Rath- er than continuing to haemor- rhage money, it would have had to declare bankruptcy long ago. The fact that it didn't was pure- ly because the state continued to prop it up, and tried to solve the problem called Air Malta by throwing even more money at it. Ministers, Chairmen, CEOs and expensive consultants have come and gone, all offering a plethora of solutions, until fi- nally the continued pumping of more state aid into the airline came to a halt this year after the European Commission put its foot down. No more state aid until the company reduces its workforce, which is overstaffed. Of course, the crux of the problem, which both Mr Cur- mi and Minister Caruana have spoken openly about, is that the airline has always been used for decades by politicians from both parties to grant political favours to their constituents by "giving them a job" with Air Malta. This is common knowl- edge which is spoken about frankly, wherever you go. Some people, with that typically cyn- ical Maltese sense of humour, even make jokes about which Minister was in charge when this or that person got their job, depending on which electoral district they were from - that is how widely 'accepted' this practice is. (Obviously, I am not referring to those who were employed through the proper channels and are suitably qual- ified). For those who have only worked in the private sector, however, such a casual, blatant dishing out of jobs without any merit has always been a very sore point. Even worse has been the way that those who are made redundant are then giv- en government jobs to cushion the blow. For example, after the pilots were sacked it was later revealed that Konrad Mizzi had signed an agreement promising any pilots who were let go a job with the public sector with the same pay until the end of 2022. On which planet is that kind of sweet deal offered to anyone who works with private enter- prise? As for those 400 employees who will be axed now, they are going to be able take up a 'vol- untary transfer scheme' to work within the government sector. What this basically means is that whether they stay with Air Malta or not, their salaries will still be paid for by the taxpayer. I do not want to sound un- caring about the families who will be affected, because los- ing one's job is a terrible thing and can lead to extreme anxiety and panic. However, the stark contrast between the private and public sectors could not be more glaring in this respect. With the former, if your place of work makes you redundant you are on your own – good luck and good night. As you face the prospect of no more income, you have to figure out what to do next by yourself, going back to the grind of sub- mitting applications which are often not even acknowledged. You sometimes have to accept a job below your previous pay scale, or you might even have to switch careers altogether, or even accept a job which you absolutely hate, because the al- ternative is being unemployed, which is unthinkable. However, when you work with a state- owned company such as Air Malta, or as happened in the past with the Drydocks, there are always schemes which are immediately offered to you to give you a lifeline and help you stay on your feet. In September 2008, for exam- ple, the government had offered lump sum settlements to the shipyard's 1,627-strong work- force at a cost of €58 million. That money came out of our taxes. Those who did not accept the lump sum were offered the chance to be transferred to a government-owned company, Industrial Projects and Services Ltd. Again, I realise that helping these workers out was prefera- ble to having such a large num- ber of people suddenly unem- ployed with all the ripple effects this can have on the country, but it also has to be pointed out that stuffing more workers into an already bloated public service cannot always be the an- swer either. It is small wonder that when employers issue a call for ap- plications, they can never find suitable candidates and are al- ways asking where all the Mal- tese-speaking applicants are. You don't have to look very far – from the looks of it, most of the country is going to end up with a 'job mal-gvern'. The question is, how long can the country's coffers continue to sustain all this, at a time when most busi- nesses in the private sector sim- ply cannot find enough staff to keep going? Rather than just waving a gov- ernment job at them, those los- ing their jobs should be helped to find alternative employment within the private sector, which as the Malta Employers' Associ- ation has pointed out, is crying out for staff. Clyde Caruana's experience as the former head of JobsPlus puts him in the ideal position to know what type of job training schemes are needed and what employers are looking for, while the MEA has even offered its help in redeploying workers in this way. I know that with an election this year, politicians will still try to dangle that tantalising carrot of a secure job for life which for some people is preferable to the vagaries of normal mar- ket forces out there in the real world. Most will tell you that the temptation to dole out jobs in exchange for votes is almost a foregone conclusion. But perhaps we finally have a finance minister with enough backbone to put a stop to this unethical, corrupt practice. He just needs to bite the bullet, as he has done with tax evasion, even though his no nonsense approach has drawn ire from some quarters. As he said recently, "I am not here to be popular…I am here to do my work. If it is not good enough and I need to leave, so be it. I reason like this because it is not my career, it is part of my career, so I want to see that in my time as Minister of Fi- nance, I start to see a change in culture." Up, up and away: the Air Malta saga Josanne Cassar It is small wonder that when employers issue a call for applications, they can never find suitable candidates and are always asking where all the Maltese-speaking applicants are