GWU orders action at national airline

The General Workers' Union has ordered industrial action at Air Malta, saying it had been left with no alternative after the airline "admitted breaching a collective agreement clause dealing with the filling of vacancies".

The union did not say what the action would consist of.

It had registered an industrial dispute with Air Malta over what it termed abuses by the management on substitution pay and the filling of vacancies.

The agreement between its maritime and aviation section and the national airline maintains, the union said, that in the case of workers who have been doing substitution jobs in a higher grade for a year or more, the company had to immediately give them a promotion in conformity with the collective agreement.

The airline's stand is that the practice of direct promotion via a period of substitution to a higher grade is inherently "unjust" and it does not want to follow it.

But the GWU insists that any changes to the collective agreement have to be made through agreement between the two parties, and therefore the management has no right to change anything unilaterally.