Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/756492
4 YANNICK PACE ALTHOUGH workers employed under the Community Work Scheme will receive a wage that is lower than what other workers receive doing the same job, this is "the first step" towards stand- ard wages, according to Employ- ment Minister Evarist Bartolo. Flanked by JobsPlus executive chairperson Clyde Caruana, Bar- tolo was replying to media ques- tions on the Community Work Scheme, aimed at the long-term unemployed who were previously engaged to carry out works with local councils and NGOs. "The first step is giving these workers a wage equal to the min- imum wage, which is 25% more than what they previously earned under the 2009 scheme," Bartolo said, adding that the next step would be a wage equal to the in- dustry standard. "We believe in the concept of equal pay for equal work but we inherited a situation of absolute chaos. We knew who the people were but we had no idea what these workers were doing and so we had no way of pegging their wage to the standard. What we did instead was to start from a basic minimum wage. Now that we know how many people are doing the different jobs, we can move on to the next step and cor- rect discrepancies." Asked why the need was felt to outsource the scheme to the private sector, Caruana said that this was consistent with the ap- proach the government has taken with a number of other projects "At the end of the day a lot of government jobs are outsourced. I believe that for us to have bet- ter results we need to join forces with the private sector. It is the way we have worked on several different projects," Caruana said. On the tendering process, Caruana said that the govern- ment had issued a tender and that the cheapest bid, that also met all the required criteria, was chosen. "The envelopes were opened in the presences of all the bidders. The first envelope we opened was that relating to technical criteria and we opened this one first so that we could evaluate the crite- ria before knowing the price of each bid. Moreover, in response to the freedom of information re- quest we received, we have made public all the documents related to this scheme." How it all started The Community Work Scheme is at the centre of a controversy following media reports claiming that the General Workers Union (GWU) was making a profit of €3,000 on each of the workers taking part in the scheme. The GWU beat two other appli- cants, clinching the tender that pays €980 per month for each of the 581 workers signing up to the scheme. Each worker will be earning a salary equivalent to the minimum wage, or roughly €700 per month. According to the government, on top of the minimum wage, the GWU must pay the 10% so- cial security contributions – ap- proximately €1,000 per worker per year – and statutory bonuses – €512 per worker a year. From the remaining €1,500, one had to deduct operational, management and training costs. In addition, the government said, any cost of living increase must be absorbed by the service supplier. In 2017, the cost for each employee will increase by €100. Contacted by MaltaToday, a s p o k e s p e r s o n for the GWU would not specify the profit that the union is set to make off each em- ployee. He listed the a d m i n i s t r a - tion fees, which included over- heads relating to the profiling of employees, the supervision of employees, the overall management of the scheme and other operational costs. The running of the scheme also saw Archbishop Charles J Sciclu- na tweeting that a union should not be making a profit off work- ers. Following a meeting with Bartolo and Caruana, the Bishop tweeted that the GWU would have a surplus of €115 on each worker, and insisted that this should go to the worker rather than the union. 'GWU only interested in commission' – PN At a press conference yester- day afternoon at the Nationalist Party headquarters, PN candi- date Salvu Mallia said that no self-respecting workers' union should ever exploit the misery suffered by workers, adding that the GWU should be ashamed of itself for accepting to administer a scheme through which workers would be paid less than others in the same job. This was echoed by Carm Mifsud Bonnici, who said that the GWU had shown that, like all of the government's other inner circle "friends", it was only inter- ested in commission and in "get- ting in on the action". He said that the new commu- nity work scheme under which unemployed persons will be employed by the GWU was creat- ing a new di- mension of precarious work, by allowing work- ers to be paid less than others doing the same job. He said however that the scheme in it- self included a num- ber of welcome initiatives – such as workers being paid the minimum wage, bonuses and sick leave – but that it created much bigger issues. Busuttil accuses Bartolo of misleading parliament Yesterday evening, Bartolo said he was proud of the new schemes and called for a Speaker's ruling after opposition leader Simon Busuttil accused him of mislead- ing the House and trying to hide in a bid to avoid answering ques- tions on one of the schemes man- aged by the General Worker's Union. However, Speaker Anglu Farru- gia ruled it was a case of politi- cal bickering and not an attempt to claim Bartolo was in bad faith when addressing House. maltatoday, WEDNESDAY, 30 NOVEMBER 2016 News Dwarna with Mariella Dimech every Tuesday at 21.00 on TVM2 60 return to work through work programme CONTINUES FROM PAGE 1 All three service providers were chosen following a call for ten- ders. Apart from the Work Pro- gramme, the UHM was also awarded the Youth Programme, which it has been running since 2014. The GWU formed part of the consortium that lost the Youth Programme bid. The programme is adminis- tered on behalf of JobsPlus. Under the WPI, the providers are assisting some 1,000 per- sons who have been registering for work for 12 months, over two years. Each provider has between 300 to 400 persons, whom they profile for their abil- ities, make them attend com- pulsory courses, train them and then help them find a job in the private sector. Whilst providers are paid for every service given, they also keep receiving fees once the per- sons find employment, be it a part-time or a full-time job. For the first three months that a person is in employment, the provider receives €350; if the worker remains success- fully employed for a straight six months, the provider receives a further €1,000. At the end of the 12 months in employment, the provider receives €350; a further €350 on the 24th month and a final €350 after three years. The total number of people who successfully found a job under the WPI is of around 60, with placements expected to in- tensify during 2017. Minimum wage in community work scheme 'first step towards' industry standard wage Evarist Bartolo