A distinct occupational category

With its award of January 8, the Industrial Tribunal has established that the working conditions of the academic staff of the University of Malta, who are attached to faculties, institutes and centres, qualify them to be recognised as a "distinct occupational category".

The origins of this nomenclature go back to the late 1970s, when the non-industrial employees of Simonds Farsons Cisk were identified in the same way by the tribunal, eventually leading the "house union" there to bargain and negotiate a distinct collective agreement for its members. Once this precedent had been set, the tribunal has had little choice but to recognise similar "splinter" unions in the course of the last 30 years - like the Union of Cabin Crew, the Airline Pilots Association and, more recently, the Rampa Union at Air Malta; the professional officers at Maltacom and at Enemalta, the legal graduates at HSBC, the civil engineers and architects employed with the government, and so on.

The criteria for recognising distinct occupational category status, in spite of there being a typically much larger union representing the majority of employees with the same employer (usually the GWU and, less so, the UHM or the MUBE), have been consistently applied ever since.

The latest tribunal decision is quite unique in at least two, related, respects.

First of all, to my knowledge, it constitutes the first time that the "splinter union" the University of Malta Academic Staff Association (UMASA) at a working establishment (in this case, the university) is probably larger in terms of membership than the "general union" (the MUT in this case) which has enjoyed undisputed sole recognition at the university for some 25 years. This, therefore, imperils the status of the MUT as a bargaining agent at the university. The tribunal decision effectively obliges the MUT to include UMASA in any deliberations affecting the conditions of employment of the academic staff at the university.

However, and this is the second aspect of the case, the tribunal did not grant sole recognition to UMASA for the "distinct occupational category" that this union has successfully argued into recognition by the same tribunal.

One must here remember that the original dispute which was referred to the tribunal came about following an inability to determine clearly who was working only/mainly at the Junior College; who was working only/mainly at the faculties, institutes and centres of the university; and how other academics should be considered, or whether they should be considered at all.

This matter is fraught with difficulty: Is a professor on long term leave (like myself) or on long-term secondment to be recognised as an employee of the university? Is a part-time lecturer at Tal-Qroqq, whose substantive (main) employment is not with the university, or who may not have any substantive employment at all, to be recognised as a member of UMASA? (The Junior College has no such staff members.) And so on. Not to mention that select group of Junior College appointments in 1996 who were issued with letters of employment by the council, and signed by Fr P. Serracino Inglott, that indicated that they were expected to work at both the Junior College and at "Tal-Qroqq", as the situation demanded.

It looks like the tribunal has decided to abandon any attempt at resolving this issue. It is, admittedly, the first time (again) in Malta that the "distinct occupational category" is not sharply and unambiguously differentiated from the group from which it has been hived off.

UMASA may ask for a "clarification" from the tribunal, perhaps pressing the tribunal to declare that it has sole recognition over the category of academics the tribunal itself has now determined as distinct. However, I would not be surprised if the tribunal refuses to do so. The university, in the eyes of the tribunal, is an employer that has at least two clusters of academics, but there is a grey and fuzzy area in between and around these clusters. Thus, rather than going for a Solomonian solution - "splitting recognition" it - it has advised the MUT and UMASA to adopt a common bargaining front, and for the university to accept this.

This is not so bad as it sounds. In the context of collective bargaining, the MUT and UMASA would have been looking nervously over their proverbial shoulder to find out what the other union is bargaining for its respective caucus, and what the university is offering. Now, these dealings can take place around the same table.

Perhaps, the most important detail of this landmark decision is that the university now has no further excuses in postponing negotiations for a new collective agreement. (Put differently, the university has managed almost three years of reprieve from any collective bargaining by its refusal to recognise UMASA.) In the interests of expediency, the MUT and UMASA would do well to agree to cooperate in seeing the negotiation process kick started in the near future. Enough energy has been spent in looking for what differentiates the Tal-Qroqq academic staff from the Junior College ones. The point has been made. It will be up to UMASA and the MUT to now hammer an agreement that identifies these differences in the conditions of work of a new, and so long overdue, collective agreement.

Prof. Baldacchino is Canada research chair (Island studies) at the University of Prince Edward Island, Canada, director of the Centre of Labour Studies of the University of Malta (on leave of absence) and co-author of Evolving Industrial Relations In Malta (Agenda, 2003).