When a government makes an electoral promise, it is not a token tossed into the air to be plucked back at will. It is an implicit contract with voters — a commitment to pursue a chosen public good, to test it in the light of reasoned debate, and to either implement it or explain honestly why it cannot be implemented. Last month’s abrupt announcement by Parliamentary Secretary Andy Ellul that the government is abandoning the pledge to pursue some form of mandatory union membership — on the basis of unspecified “legal advice” — failed all three tests. It was neither transparent, nor persuasive, nor properly debated. And more important, it throws away a realistic tool to strengthen protections for those most exposed in our labour market.

The policy at issue was never a crude command to make everyone join a single union. For months the debate focused on targeted models: automatic enrolment for low-wage or precarious workers, sectoral arrangements, or systems with opt-outs or modest fees for those who choose not to formally join but still benefit from collective agreements. Unions such as the GWU and UĦM argued these models were about correcting a structural imbalance — the existence of a growing group of workers squeezed between the minimum and average wages who lack both bargaining power and practical access to representation. Their case was not merely one of union growth; it was a proposal designed to protect people who are easiest to exploit.

That makes the government’s process hard to defend. Announcing a reversal after “legal advice” without sharing the advice, without inviting counter-opinions from social partners, and without a proper forum of debate is not social dialogue — it is a press-release disguised as policy. Trade unions, which had been part of the public conversation on this topic for years, were not shown the reasoning that led to the U-turn. Employer organisations predictably welcomed the abandonment; but if the mere fact of employer opposition is to be the deciding factor in whether a policy proceeds, then electoral promises become hostage to the loudest lobby, not instruments of democratic choice.

If the government’s lawyers reached a genuine conclusion that the models under discussion could not stand constitutional or EU scrutiny, that advice should be laid before parliament or at least summarised for stakeholders — with an opportunity for considered reply. To treat legal opinion as an opaque veto, invoked on a Sunday headline and communicated hours earlier by phone, is both poor governance and poor respect for the institutions of social partnership.

The scrapping of the mandatory union membership pledge will be welcomed by some — employers who fear regulatory change, libertarians who recoil at any compulsion, and commentators who prefer tidy headlines to messy reform. But for the workers caught in the gap between statutory minimums and a living wage, for those told (explicitly or implicitly) that joining a union is taboo, this U-turn is a lost opportunity. The better course is not to pretend the debate is over, but to reopen it properly: publish the legal reasoning, convene social partners in good faith, and design targeted, proportionate measures that secure representation for the weakest in our labour market while respecting individual rights.

If the government truly believes in social dialogue, it must stop treating unions as an obstacle to be sidelined and start treating them as partners in crafting practical solutions. Otherwise electoral pledges will remain hollow words, and the most vulnerable among us will remain, as ever, the ones left to bear the consequences.