Nurses are infuriated by the agreement the government signed with Vitals, saying its provisions were opposite to what their union had promised them.

Individual nurses told the Times of Malta that the Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses had assured them their current conditions would not change when a new operator took over the running of St Luke’s, Karin Grech and Gozo General hospitals.

However, they were upset to discover when contract details were published on Wednesday that, among other things, the government had committed to negotiating changes to their present working conditions, including job descriptions, rosters and present staffing levels.

MUMN general secretary Colin Galea defended the agreement that the union had signed with the government, insisting it was the one that bound the government and the union’s members, not the contract between the government and Vitals.

Vitals has been given a 30-year concession to run the three hospitals. The deal governs a €200 million redevelopment, maintenance and management of the hospitals.

They discovered the government had committed to negotiating changes to their present working conditions,including rosters

Large chunks of the contract were redacted, with the government saying this was because of “commercially sensitive details”. It was the government that chose what to delete.

According to one of the clauses, the government committed to using “reasonable endeavours to liaise, discuss and negotiate revisions of work practices, job description and shift patterns, with a view to accommodating the reasonable requests of the concessionaire [Vitals] in this regard”.

The clause states that Vitals acknowledges that the government shall bear no responsibility if the workers or their unions refuse to comply with any revisions to their working conditions.

The nurses who spoke to this newspaper said that they were “extremely irked” that their union had not informed them of this possibility. On the contrary, they added, the union had sent them an e-mail listing the conditions that would not change.

The nurses accused the union of taking them “for a ride”.

“We had received an e-mail saying our present conditions and rosters and job descriptions will not change, and now, all of sudden, we read that the government committed itself to enter into negotiations to change them.

“I always suspected that something was wrong when our union told us it had signed an agreement without even seeing the contract or showing it to us,” one nurse complained.

Admitting that he had not seen the revision of work practices clause before and had only learnt about it through the media, Mr Galea said he was not too concerned about it, for it was “a standard clause”.

“Frankly, I do not really care what the government signed with Vitals. What I care about is the agreement we signed with the government on the workers’ conditions, and we are vigilant that whatever we agreed to is observed.

“We will not allow any changes – not even a comma – and if they do, they’ll have big trouble with the union,” Mr Galea said when contacted.

In a statement today, the government said that while the workers at the three hospitals would remain civil servants, their working conditions could not be changed without their consensus and following agreement with the union which represented them.

This could clearly seen in the contracts signed, which protected the workers.

The investment being made, the government said, would give the workers the best possible service to Maltese and Gozitan patients.

In another statement, Vitals said it was fully committed to its contractual obligations as set out within the agreements signed with the government.

It said that throughout the past months, it developed an open dialogue with unions and tackled issues brought forward. The management said it would continue to work with both unions and individual members of staff to ensure everyone’s concerns were heard.

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