A number of trade unions representing Air Malta employees yesterday lamented the “total darkness” that surrounds the government’s plans for the airline’s future.
Last Sunday, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat told a political activity that decisions on the future of Air Malta would be taken “within weeks”. He also compared the way forward for Air Malta with that of Enemalta, saying the government would be adopting the same model.
Contacted by this newspaper yesterday, all major unions involved in Air Malta said they were not being given any information about what was going on and expressed their dismay that communication between them and the government was “non-existent”.
“We have been trying to discover what is going on for weeks on end. They [the government] always tell us to wait. However, this is creating a lot of unnecessary anxiety among workers,” a GWU representative told the Times of Malta.
“Last week a ministry official told us that discussions had been delayed as there were some problems,” a spokesman for the Union of Cabin Crew said.
The government is not even informing the management what is going on and this is not the way things are done
“We have no idea what is happening and the problem is that the management seems to be in the same boat as us,” he added.
An official of the Union of Airline Engineers said a meeting had been held with the CEO last week.
“His reply was that he was as much in the dark as we are. The government is not even informing the management what is going on and this is not the way things are done,” he said.
The unions also said that the comparison made by Dr Muscat between Enemalta and Air Malta had not reassured them at all.
“If the same model is used, as the Prime Minister is now saying, it would mean that many of Air Malta’s current employees will have to leave the airline,” an official from the engineers’ union said.
“We cannot comment on whether we would approve a similar privatisation as the one of Enemalta. What about the workers? Will some have to leave?” the GWU representative said.
The government sold a 33 per cent stake in Enemalta to China’s Shanghai Electric.
During the process, some 500 employees had to leave their Enemalta job and were transferred to government departments.
Talks on the possible partial privatisation of Air Malta have been going on for months, with the government holding parallel negotiations with various airlines including a Chinese airline, Turkish Airlines and Etihad.
The government has always insisted that it would retain majority shareholding in the national airline to safeguard the island’s interests. Some workers yesterday told the Times of Malta that before the election Dr Muscat had promised them that the airline would not be sold.
Although the airline has veered from the restructuring targets imposed by the EU, it is planning to come close in March 2016, forecasting a loss of just €4 million.
According to airline chairwoman Maria Micallef, the national airline is expected to break even by 2017 and become profitable by 2018.