Trade unions in Malta

Abstract

This report on Maltese trade unions forms part of a wide-ranging project, initiated and coordinated by the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), which aims to map changes in unionisation and the varying organisational structures of unions in the ‘New Member States’ (NMS) of the European Union (EU).Although there is a burgeoning literature on the present and future prospects of unionism which includes some of the countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) (for example, Gall 2009; Phelan 2009, 2007), trade union morphology in these countries is rarely studied. Moreover, the smaller countries are often omitted, as are the Mediterranean islands – and since 2004, EU member states – of Cyprus and Malta. While rigorously scrutinised data on union development are available for almost all countries that joined the EU before 2004, basic information on trade unions in the NMS is largely lacking. This is not to say that no data are available on union membership and structure for the NMS.