A group of 10 hospital managers are only complaining about a new collective agreement for staff because they want to be given preferential treatment, a union claimed yesterday.

Union Ħaddiema Magħqudin said the managers were upset because they had to take part in a competitive process for promotion that was also open to their subordinates.

The union was replying to a judicial protest filed last week in which the managers accused it of betraying them and failing to protect their rights.

Joseph Castillo, Noel Ciantar, Martin Francalanza, Francis Laus, Rita Micallef, John Mifsud, Margaret Muscat, John Salo-mone Reynaud, Cynthia Scerri and Andrew Scicluna said the union had seriously prejudiced their positions when it signed a new collective agreement for hospital staff on February 14 last year.

Senior principals would now be elevated from scale eight to scale five in less than four years and officers on scale seven would be elevated to scale five in a few months.

They said that the agreement would force them to compete with subordinates for their own jobs, which would turn the existing struc-tures upside down and lead to unjust preferences and discrimination.

But the union countered it was the managers’ own expectations which would give rise to discrimination because they were expecting to be given preferential treatment.

The managers had benefited from a promotion and €2,000 salary increase and now wanted to bar others from being eligible for promotion.

The UĦM’s general secretary Josef Vella and section secretary Gian Paul Gauci refuted the managers’ claims of unfairness and illegal and improper practices.

They warned them to withdraw the claims immediately and held them responsible for any damages they and the union could suffer as a result. Lawyer Ian Spiteri Bailey signed the counter-protest.