GRTU is increasing its pressures
against any possible deal involving selling the troubled Price Club to
foreign enterprises.
It has recently issued a statement
expressing its opinion. Then, not content, it also issued a second
statement criticising the Union Haddiema Maghqudin for daring to suggest
that perhaps selling the Price Club to foreigners may not be all that
bad.
At one level, one cannot but remark that the chemistry does not seem to
work between GRTU and Price Club. GRTU initiated two appeals to the Fair
Trade Commission claiming that Price Club was gaining a dominant
position. This was turned down, twice.
Then matters took their own course.
When Price Club began to face the well-known troubles, it found no
support in GRTU. On the contrary it found people ready to cut and
dismember it.
“There are Maltese investors,” GRTU said in Tuesday’s statement,
“who are ready to purchase viable commercial companies structured for
the Maltese market”. Translated, this reads bits and pieces of Price
Club.
This stand is a serious one for it means that GRTU is against any
supermarket group which gains a higher dimension than just a village
mini-market. The permitted outlets are those which are “viable
commercial companies structured for the Maltese market”.
If, therefore, in some conceivable future, a company running one
supermarket links up with another supermarket in a different part of
Malta and thus enjoys those economies of scale which are not possible
for a village mini-market, this will find, once again, GRTU standing in
its way.
More. GRTU has every right to stick to its opinion as to the sizes of
enterprises for the Maltese market. But it does not stop here. It also
passes judgement on the present predicament of the Price Club. It has
quite definite ideas on what needs to be done: nothing except the
dismemberment of Price Club will please it. Since it has already
declared itself against the dominant position that Price Club had, and
since it does not accept the possibility that Price Club is sold to a
foreign company, its only solution is to dismember the supermarket chain
into small, containable, palatable pieces.
One must ask here: and what of the employees?
And what of the creditors? And what of the banks? Will the dismemberment
of the Price Club save the jobs of the employees? Hardly, for GRTU
hurries to state, without adducing any concrete proof, that many former
Price Club employees have already found jobs. Will the dismemberment of
the Price Club
give creditors their due? Will it give the banks their due?
Then there is the whole issue as regards foreign entrepreneurs in Malta.
GRTU, one remembers, is one which usually complains that no foreign
investment is coming to Malta.
The same Libyan company which is mentioned as a possible partner for
Price Club is also present in Malta in other sectors. There are also
other foreign enterprises with subsidiaries in Malta. Is GRTU against
foreign capital in the hotel sector? Or in the manufacturing sector? Or
in the banking sector?
In opposing link-ups and synergies, GRTU is going against the march of
history. In opposing the entry of big international companies it is
making the consumer population go back to the corner grocery shops and
all that this implies – limited choice, long waiting times, unhealthy
handling of food items – which we had thought the big bright and easy
supermarkets were leading us out of.
It is using the disaster that befell Price Club not just to beat Price
Club and dismember it but also to see to it that nobody else dares do a
Price Club again.
