Malta Shipyards Chairman John Cassar White, 58, will tomorrow move out of his office in Ghajn Dwieli for the last time, resigning after nine years of service at the helm of the most controversial state company in Malta’s modern history.
The cautious and soft-spoken chairman is leaving the tumultuous ‘yards of ships and steel and easily irritable workers for strict personal reasons, after having braved some of the most noisy and riotous episodes there.
In his letter of resignation submitted to Investments Minister Austin Gatt last Sunday, Cassar White refers to health problems afflicting his family that have now forced him to concentrate on home – a motivation confirmed by people close to him.
It is a cruel irony that after having endured all the events happening under his leadership against all odds, Cassar White’s reasons for resigning come from beyond the restless shop floor or the equally fiery minister who prefers head-on confrontation than the chairman’s customary patient negotiations.
Only last May, Gatt turned down Cassar White’s resignation after he was named on MaltaToday Midweek as one of Alfred Sant’s kitchen cabinet – the Opposition leader’s unofficial group of six close advisors.
“He assured me he always had trust in my capabilities and integrity, and that he saw no conflict in what I was doing,” Cassar White told the press shortly after meeting the minister in May.
Four months later, it was the General Workers’ Union that demanded his head in a motion it sent to he minister complaining about the shipyards’ management.
Gatt responded in his typical no-holds-barred reply: “The GWU farcically expects to be the manager of the shipyards. … It isn’t … Only the government as owner has the power to appoint and remove its directors, and we have all the trust in Cassar White and the other directors. He doesn’t need anyone else’s trust, and certainly he doesn’t need to be popular with the workers for government to appreciate he is doing a good job. No chairman can be popular with workers who don’t want to work. The GWU is only determined to see Malta Shipyards go bankrupt and its workers sacked. This is not trade unionism but suicidal political militancy.”
Evidently, more than a defence of Cassar White, Gatt was keener on beating yet again the misguided union that has a CV of colossal blunders since it ousted the “moderate” faction from its headquarters.
But it is to Cassar White’s credit that he has earned the trust and credibility of various Labour and Nationalist administrations, serving at the shipyards’ hot seat under three consecutive ministers.
His introduction to the ‘yards was in fact initiated through Alfred Sant when in November 1996 the former banker was asked to come up with a plan for a radical reform aimed at making Malta Drydocks viable and that would nip one of the last historic trade union bastions of militancy in the bud at the height of the New Labour government.
It was a tall order: at the time the company – still distinct from Malta Shipbuilding – was making losses approaching the €163 million mark (Lm70 million) and had just lost over €58.2 million (Lm25 million) in two years – a veritable public liability but also an industrial relations cauldron.
Yet the plan he came up with in barely a week was an authoritative, credible working document that besides the Sant government’s support also gained the backing of the General Workers’ Union and the now defunct Drydocks Council.
Eventually he was appointed chairman of government’s major investment arm – MIMCOL – in a position he kept also under the following Nationalist administration until he was appointed head of Malta Shipbuilding in Marsa by former minister Josef Bonnici.
It was at this point that Cassar White started the long and guarded rapprochement of the two ‘yards – the Marsa and the Cospicua one (then still chaired by Prof. Noel Zarb Adami).
“The big issue was the shipyards’ heavy dependency on state aid,” Cassar White recalled yesterday night. “Other issues that kept recurring during my tenure were the heavy militancy of the trade union despite the removal of workers’ participation, the surplus workers that had to be shed off, and the structuring of management on a commercial model.”
Cassar White was at the right place at the right time when it came to implementing long-term strategic policies. His vision and method can perhaps be described as one of a patient, stoical, hands-on Thatcherite. By November 2003, the drydocks and the shipbuilding company which he both shared although had separate boards of directors were amalgamated into Malta Shipyards.
The merger meant that workers would be interchangeable according to need between the two ‘yards, besides the restructuring process based on the Appledore report – a source of much headaches and protests from the union but which has also put the company on the tortuous road to financial viability. From some 7,600 workers inherited by the Nationalist administration in 1987, the workforce has gone down to 1,700 although government absorbed hundreds of the redundant workers by redeploying them in other departments and gave hefty early retirement deals to others.
Cassar White has words of praise for the workers’ high skills but says relations with the union were characterised by “ups and downs” and admits resignation was on his mind on different occasions.
“I cannot say I hadn’t thought of resigning a couple of times when I would be faced with a deadlock or when workers would not understand the importance of certain decisions we were taking,” Cassar White says. “There were times when there was a lot of tension. When I went in for the job I knew the situation was much more agitated than elsewhere. What surprised me however was how difficult it was to change the culture of people who seemed like pre-programmed to remain the same.”
It was not just obsolete work practices he was battling. Cassar White faced the union’s resistance when the ‘yard had won the famous contract to refit American warship in USS La Salle in January 2001.
Citing the Constitution and claiming that working on the US Mediterranean-based 6th Fleet warship breached the neutrality clause, workers directed by their former section secretary, the late Tony Coleiro, refused to carry out their work.
The end of 2003 was marred by an unofficial stoppage by workers and the assault on then chief executive Peter Moore who was attacked and manhandled at the ‘yard. The incident had repercussions on the union itself when section secretary Alfred Cassar was forced to resign while former GWU deputy secretary-general Manwel Micallef was hurled insults by workers as he tried to calm them down.
But unlike the government, which has made it a point to up the ante whenever an escalation occurred, bluffing along the way it would just close down the shipyards, Cassar White has remained resiliently low key as he tried solving the multitude of problems on the shop floor.
Three years ago, the union was facing a garnishee order of €116,468 (Lm50,000) after it had declared go-slow directives deemed abusive and illegal by the management. The union was protesting against the use of sub-contractors and over disagreements on night shift arrears, prompting Gatt, and eventually the prime minister, to declare the company would be liquidated if the directives persisted. Despite all the bluff and Gonzi’s pompous declaration that there was “no turning back” on the court action, government did retract and drop the garnishee order in the end.
Cassar White leaves the shipyards in the high seas, precisely in the year when state subsidies are meant to stop completely in line with the European Union’s directives. Over the last three years, subsidies have gone down from €16.3 million (Lm7 million) to €11.7 (Lm5 million) to €4.7 million (Lm2 million) last year.
“The shipyards have seen great changes and improvements over the last eight years,” Cassar White says. “This year it is meant to stop being dependent on state aid. It definitely has all the ingredients to be independent: there’s a highly skilled workforce, it has the competitive advantage of being in the centre of the Mediterranean and there’s a global ongoing positive cycle in the ship repair industry. But there is much more to be done, and it will now depend a lot on the productivity and the affinity between management and the workers.”
As he concluded in his report to Sant more than a decade ago, “the task ahead is daunting”, and his successor, whoever it will be, should know the ‘yards still need much more than a refit. And with an election round the corner and its ensuing unpredictability, few would be willing to enter the stormy docks.

kschembri@mediatoday.com.mt