Doctors in all government hospitals, clinics and health centres will stage a one-hour strike on Tuesday.
The action will exclude the Accident and Emergency Department, wards and operating theatres.
The strike will take place between 8am and 9am, although those with appointments during this hour will be seen later.
Moreover, for 24 hours starting from 8am on Tuesday, doctors will not issue sickness medical certificates.
The day before, on Monday, doctors will not give lectures at the Medical School, although bedside teaching will continue.
However, no new foreign students will be accepted.
Union has been asking university for recognition for six years
The doctors are under directives from their union, the Medical Association of Malta, issued over pending grievances with the Health Ministry and the university. Medical Association of Malta (MAM) general secretary Martin Balzan explained that the main issue with the Health Ministry was about doctors’ career progression and the fact that in Gozo a number of doctors were not being paid according to their collective agreement.
He said they were owed arrears amounting to thousands.
Also, a number of calls for the recruitment of consultants had not been made despite the urgency.
He said the major problem at university was one of recognition. The University of Malta was discriminating against it by excluding it from negotiations on the collective agreement for academic staff, who include doctors.
MAM, he said, represented the 400 doctors who lecture at the Medical School while the University of Malta Academic Staff Association (UMASA), one of the unions involved in the negotiations, represented under 300 lecturers.
The other, the Malta Union of Teachers (MUT), represents those teaching at the Junior College.
Dr Balzan said it was “unheard of” that a union held talks on behalf of people who were not its members, adding that it was “nonsensical” that it had been excluded from negotiations despite representing the majority. He said the MAM has been asking the university for recognition for six years but always “met a brick wall”.
The university rector should call a verification exercise to confirm recognition, he added.
The MAM filed a judicial protest yesterday saying it did not make sense for the university to negotiate without it. It called on the other two unions to cease discussions and not to sign an agreement on behalf of doctors.
Dr Balzan warned that it would file a claim for damages, saying that last year it won a doctor’s case that cost taxpayers €250,000. “Imagine multiplying this by 400,” he said.
He also warned that “there will be no Medical School in October” if the issue remained unresolved.
“We do not want the union representing university lecturers to represent doctors who lecture there. It’s very simple. UMASA can talk on behalf of university lecturers but not those at the Medical School, our members.”
He complained that doctors’ qualifications were not recognised by the new collective agreement. Unlike university lecturers, it was not possible for doctors to become professors as they were classified as visiting lecturers.
In a statement, the university said the unions recognised to represent academic staff working at the university and the Junior College were UMASA and MUT. “This representation covers all academics, irrespective of their discipline and irrespective of the faculty, institute, centre or school they belong to,” it said.
“It is absurd for MAM to declare an industrial dispute with the university on the basis that they claim to represent the majority of the academic staff working at the Medical School which is not a legal entity in its own right.”
UMASA accused the doctors’ union of “trying to derail a legitimately negotiated collective agreement”.
Even the Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses hit out at the doctors, accusing the MAM of “attempting to use patient health services to attain its far-fetched aims”.