Valletta Malta is an island, so it almost goes without saying that it’s not a big island. ACORN has a new affiliate there, Solidarjetà. It’s an interesting organization working in what I increasingly understand is a fascinating, but challenging environment.
I had never been to Malta or its major city, Valletta, but being in Catania to work with organizers there trying to get organizing drives underway in Catania, there was no excuse for me not to take a cheap, quick flight over for twenty-four hours. I was both lucky and unlucky in my time. Unlucky, because most of the leadership and a good deal of the members were still enjoying the last days of summer holidays and were out about. I was lucky though because the one full-time organizer, Gabriel Apap was working and was able to spent eight hours with me on the organization and what it is trying to do in Malta.
Solidarjetà is a hybrid of sorts. It’s a labor union, tenants’ union, and community union of sorts. It’s a young organization trying to figure out how to lots of new things at the same time and seeing what might work.
On the tenant side, they have amalgamated social media tenant support groups that refers complaints for them to handle. They are also doing out reach on the doors and with street stalls to get the word out about their work. There hasn’t been rent control since the second world war, but the organization is moving forward on landlord licensing. It’s complicated, but I’ll get to that.
On the union side, their 200 members already makes them the third largest labor organization in the country, where there are two other federations larger, but linked to political parties, where they are independent. The labor laws are somewhat union-friendly. 50% plus 1, if you can prove them are members and paying dues, gets you recognition and the right to bargain. There is “sole and exclusive” representation for a single union, if you are organizing wall-to-wall, but there can be multiple unions, if a work place is being organized by profession. Solidarjetà is close to an agreement on a smaller care home in the private sector and other unit in the public sector. They also have an emerging association of what they call “creative” workers in the arts, theater, and music that have been meeting and trying to sort out an organizing plan on an association model to deal with their informality and precarity.
A lot of their work has been targeting and responding to Malta’s immigrant communities that are largely Indian, Pakistani, Nepalese, and Filipino. Here it all gets dicey, because of what it takes to work in Malta. An immigrant has to have a work permit signed with a guarantee from an employer. Much of this is handled by brokers, which can be expensive and sketchy and sometimes involves paying off a loan over time to the broker. A valid rental agreement from a landlord also is required to get a work permit. What this means in practice is that, if you lose your job or you are abused by your employer, perhaps because you were organizing, you only have 30-days to find a new job to keep your permit and go into all of that rigmarole. All this opens the window on your rental agreement allowing the landlord to raise your rent, and the same risks exist if you agitate or organize as a tenant for better conditions and lose your rental agreement. It’s all a bit more complicated, but suffice it to say the current laws for immigrants to work and rent totally favor the landlords and employers, creating additional obstacles to organization. Not surprisingly, home ownership is very high among the Maltese and tenancy is very high for the rest of the population.
Talking about care homes, led to talking about increasing numbers of home health workers and whether that might be an opportunity. Having stumbled upon this issue in Bulgaria, perhaps I was looking for more examples. Regardless, it wasn’t hard to find them.
Malta is a small country with a fledgling organization, that is committed to meeting the challenges. I wouldn’t bet against them, but it’s going to a rough ride.
