The government has been given four months to appoint a Joint Negotiating Council to meet the Association for Civil Protection employees and discuss their complaints.

This judgement was delivered by the Court of Appeal which overturned a decision delivered by the First Hall of the Civil Court in 2009.

The association filed its application against the Minister for Education and Employment, the Minister for Justice and the Interior, the Director of Industrial Relations and the Deputy Director General of the Management and Personnel Office.

It said it was established by law to look after the welfare of all its members and all matters concerning their conditions of employment. It had laid a number of concerns before the authorities but these were still unsolved.

The association had then called upon the authorities to establish a Joint Negotiating Council to discuss these concerns but the authoritieshad refused to do so.

The First Hall of the Civil Court had ruled there was no obligation to set up the council. The association then appealed to the Court of Appeal – composed of Chief Justice Silvio Camilleri, Mr Justice Albert J. Magri and Mr Justice Tonio Mallia – which noted that the first court had dismissed the association’s request on the basis that the association was not a trade union and so was not entitled to the Joint Negotiating Council.

Furthermore, the association’s members, as government employees, were excluded at law from moving their complaints before such a council.

But the Court of Appeal found that the council, as established by law, could hear disputes concerning conditions of employment of persons, including members of the Salvage and Aid section of the Civil Protection Unit. The law contained contradictory provisions and could be interpreted as meaning that government employees, including members of the Civil Protection Unit, were prohibited from having recourse to the Joint Negotiating Council. The court, however, held that, as the law specifically referred to members of the Salvage and Aid section, such employees could not be denied access to this council.

It was, therefore, the government’s duty to pave the way for the setting up of this council to discuss the association’s complaints. The court set a four-month deadline.

Lawyers Ian Spiteri Bailey and Edward Gatt appeared for the Civil Protection Department.