Public holidays' axing open to legal interpretation

Industrial relations consultants have raised questions on whether the budget measure through which employees will lose public holidays falling on weekends can be applied to all workers.

Legal sources said conditions of employment stipulated by law were the minimum which employers had to grant employees and trade unions usually negotiated agreements through which workers enjoyed better benefits.

"A collective agreement or a contract of employment is binding on both employers and employees. Therefore, if there are clauses which stipulate that public holidays falling on weekends should be added to vacation leave, these should prevail and the government does not have the right to interfere in such a contract. It is only the employers and employees who can decide to change the contract," the sources said.

The government is shortly expected to publish legislation to give legal force to the measures announced in the budget but legal sources said one had to wait and see how the amendments would be drafted.

"The government might opt for a blanket clause regarding public holidays through which all contracts of employment will have to be interpreted accordingly but it is unlikely that the government would want to amend the Industrial Relations Act in this manner.

"The law was passed following a thorough consultation process with employers and unions. The government would be giving unions the opportunity to stir up problems if it amended it in this way, especially in the face of recent declarations made by the unions that they disagreed with such measures when talks on the social pact failed," the sources said.

Union sources said some employers had already declared they would not implement the changes and that their workers would still have public holidays falling on their days off added to their leave.

The sources said employees in the public sector were most likely to lose the public holidays falling on weekends because their collective agreement had expired.

Employers estimated that the deduction of such public holidays would save Maltese companies about Lm10 million.

Union Haddiema Maghqudin secretary general Gejtu Vella said that once the social pact was not endorsed the government had acted on its own and there had to be serious consultation on such a matter.

"If one accepts that the government can legislate to remove the entitlement of public holidays falling on weekends this would mean that the government can reduce employees' working conditions.

"The government cannot enact blanket legislation because different places of work have different needs.

"With this measure, employees will be losing 10 days over the next three years and lose public holidays whenever they fall on a weekend forever. Had agreement been reached about a social pact, the workers would have lost fewer holidays and only for the duration of the pact," Mr Vella said.