Air Malta’s retirment schemes

I wish to comment on Air Malta’s denial in respect to prejudice against staff taking retirement schemes (January 28).

Air Malta commented that “for staff on reduced hours there is absolutely no discrimination against them in applications for vacant positions or in the calculation of payments and years of service under the redundancy or early retirement schemes”. This is now a fact, which has been remedied following the intervention of Marie Louise Coleiro Preca and Justyne Caruana.

I wish to note, however, that it is not true that prejudices pertaining to Air Malta retirement schemes do not exist, as Air Malta seems to be stating in its above-mentioned denial.

It is a fact that if an employee opts to take the voluntary redundancy scheme (VRS) instead of the early retirement scheme (ERS) there is a capping situation pertaining only to the VRS while the ERS does not have any capping whatsoever.

One must remember that the VRS option carries with it one lump sum that is capped and the ERS is a sort-of pension scheme, which is not capped.

If one considers that in both occasions the employee will still be losing his job, why is one option being prejudiced against the other? Are the employees (in both cases) not going to lose their jobs anyway without any further compensation for the rest of their working life? So why does Air Malta prejudice between one option and the other?

Union intervention in this regard proved futile.

Air Malta should immediately look into this situation to ensure remedial action is taken and make absolutely sure that there is no prejudice against its employees in this tangled issue.