Teachers will enjoy enhanced family-friendly measures when a new collective agreement being signed today comes into force.
Malta Union of Teachers President John Bencini said these measures affect teachers more than other professions because 85 per cent of people in the teaching profession were women.
He said one of the highlights of the new collective agreement, which replaces that signed in 2007, was the possibility for teachers to opt for reduced working hours.
Mr Bencini said the union had been campaigning for reduced hours for a number of years because “we were the only people who were denied this right”.
The collective agreement comes after three months of intensive talks between the teachers’ union and Education Minister Dolores Christina and includes measures to help teachers strike a balance between work and family life.
“The teaching profession has been feminised all over Europe. In Malta about 85 per cent of the teaching profession is female, meaning family-friendly measures will affect us more than other professions,” Mr Bencini said.
These new measures, he said, could attract more people to the profession and bring back “dormant teachers”, who have been unable to return to the profession due to the lack of further measures to enable them to strike a family-work balance. They will, however, not touch on the issue of pregnancy leave, which had been hitting the headlines earlier this year.
“We need these people,” Mr Bencini said, when talking about experienced teachers who have not been able to return to work because of commitments at home.
The agreement will also provide better allowances for teachers but Mr Bencini cautioned that it will not include a salary rise, which the government will discuss with all trade unions for a renewed collective agreement for the civil service at the end of 2010. He said the MUT was working towards achieving a salary rise in those discussions.
According to a statement sent by MUT, the collective agreement was intended to face the challenges of education reform. Mr Bencini pointed out that this was the last year when Junior Lyceum examinations were held and streaming had been discontinued, meaning the “challenges are great and we want our teachers to be committed”.
He said he had no doubt about their commitment but the union did not want to look back after five years and realise the students had been “ruined”. As a result, the agreement aims to address problems which may arise as a result of the reform by, for example, increasing support services for teachers and allowing teachers more liberty in their classes, without being scrutinised excessively.
The agreement aims to improve on certain specifics in the agreement signed three years ago: “We have agreed a number of clauses which need to be revised to refine the performance of colleges,” Mr Bencini said, stressing that the colleges could be better run once the previous agreement was revised.
“For the challenge of the education reform to be a success, the government must work hand in hand with the teachers,” he said.
Further details about the agreement will be revealed after the document is sealed today, Mr Bencini said. The union will soon be holding a meeting for delegates to explain the details.