Growing conflicts of interest as GWU boss rakes in government retainers

General Workers Union President Victor Carachi’s growing list of government retainers is presenting a growing conflict of interest and a source of discontent among the ranks of Malta’s largest union.

The Shift is informed that while Carachi’s attention has been drawn several times to the state of affairs, he is ignoring the warnings and continues to take retainers from the same government with which he is tasked to negotiate on behalf of the union’s members.

Talk inside the union is that Carachi’s position has become untenable, but he is still being supported by colleagues such as General Secretary Josef Bugeja.

Carachi, a 64-year-old former banker, has been a full-time GWU president since 2008. But it is his remuneration from different government sources that is causing ripples inside the union’s corridors.

He is a board member of Malta Enterprise, the Occupational Health and Safety Authority and of government investment financial vehicle Malita Investments plc. From these, he receives three different salaries running into tens of thousands of euros a year.

Carachi has also consulted for different public entities while serving as GWU’s president. He was paid €48,000 for consultancies given to Mimcol, the government’s holding company, another €12,500 from Malta Government Investments Ltd, and has a €45 an hour agreement with the Malta Freeport’s regulator for consultancy work.

Making the conflicts of interest even starker is that the GWU represents most of the employees at the government entities Carachi is working for on the side.

Carachi is not known to be the typical vociferous fighter for worker’s rights and rarely speaks in public. The GWU itself has almost altogether stopped taking action against government authorities. It is largely perceived as being on the government’s side of the fence.

The most recent case in point is the Air Malta saga, in which the GWU has been accused by its members, particularly those in ground handling, of betrayal.

The union is also in the government’s pocket, commercially speaking. In addition to receiving hundreds of thousands of euro from the government for leasing parts of its property portfolio to its agencies, it also has a multi-million-euro tender to administer the Community Work Scheme on the government’s behalf – through which the GWU makes a commission on every person in the scheme.