The General Workers' Union has accused the British High Commission of breaching employment law through selective redundancies.
In a statement this afternoon, the GWU said that for the past months, it had to enter into multiple disputes with the High Commission over conditions of employment.
The union attempted to sit at the discussion table with the High Commissioner but the High Commissioner claimed the GWU no longer represented a majority of the employees.
The GWU said it was not in a position to participate in a union membership verification exercise in the past days as the parameters set by the High Commission were not agreed to with the Union and because the case had been referred to the Industrial Tribunal for a decision.
The union is insisting that it has a valid collective agreement in force which remains to be respected and that the High Commissioner is not in a position to refuse representation of its employees, even if just one employee was a union member and wished to discuss his case.
The GWU said it particularly deplored the recent approach of the High Commission to challenge Malta's judicial authorities whereby, notwithstanding that a dispute on recognition has been referred to the Industrial Tribunal for it to be decided in accordance with Maltese law, the High Commission yesterday notified the union it shall not meet with it any longer as it no longer considered it a representative of the majority of the workforce.
"Such an anti-union approach is a first for Malta and following queries with British trade unions it transpired that this is also not a common approach of good employers in the UK. These manoeuvres by the High Commission are tantamount to a bad practise which unfortunately is being introduced in Malta.
"The Union is claiming that the British High Commission, particularly under the administration of Louise Stanton, has breached employment law by making selective redundancies over the past months, all of which happened to be union members, whilst employees engaged under Stanton (despite being on definite contracts) were retained in breach of the employment and industrial relations act that makes mandatory the last in and first out principle."
The union said these cases were not referred to the Industrial Tribunal as the High Commissioner subsequent to selective redundancies repeatedly offered two years compensation in consideration of the employee waiving his right to make a claim against the High Commission.
Such compensation was the equivalent to that granted by the tribunals in the multiple cases against the High Commission by various past employees. However, the union requested the Department of Employment and Industrial Relations to act against the High Commission for breach of law, albeit no actions were taken.