Air Malta pilots yesterday turned up for work without wearing a jacket and cap under a dress-down directive, which is set to stay in force after no progress was registered in talks between their union and the national airline.
Sources told Times of Malta that no further contacts were made yesterday following Tuesday’s meeting, which failed to break the deadlock in a dispute over shortage of staff and other issues.
The Airline Pilots Association (Alpa) yesterday expressed its readiness to hold further talks. It had warned that international flights may soon be affected if it decides to issue new directives.
The unions said the current directive was a sign of protest against the airline.
During Tuesday’s meeting, Alpa submitted its concerns over the issues in dispute, such as what it sees as a shortage of staff and the need to safeguard its members’ pension.
It also wanted to clarify a clause in the collective agreement regarding computation of service.
The union says 15 pilots have retired since March, placing an additional burden on its members who have to cover for their former colleagues. As a consequence, pilots complain of having to work on their days off and that some of them even had to cancel their booked holidays.
Another source of disagreement is the decision to impose 35 per cent income tax on the early retirement package given to those pilots who were offered a golden handshake. The union maintains that such schemes were never taxed before.
On the other hand, Air Malta does not see justification for any industrial action and argues that issues such as these need more time to be tackled.
In a recent statement the national airline noted that threats of industrial action by Alpa at the height of summer were not unprecedented but such a course of action would only harm the tourism industry.
It also argues that its pilot complement of 110 is based on standard criteria used by the industry. This measure takes into consideration the total flight passenger capacity of an airline in kilometres in the context of the requirements of the restructuring plan.