Updated 7pm, adds PN statement
A total of 40 cabin crew will be made redundant at Malta Air from January 1, with the airline blaming the General Workers' Union for the dismissals.
A spokesman for Malta Air, a subsidiary of the Ryanair Group, said the union had failed to deliver a cabin crew emergency agreement agreed by the GWU and Malta Air last Thursday.
The redundancies amount to a fifth of its staff contingent of 179 cabin crew and pilots.
This emergency agreement included "modest pay cuts" to be restored over four years, along with a minimum pay guarantee and a year three review.
Malta Air is operating at just 10 per cent of its capacity due to the COVID-19 crisis but is still employing 100 per cent of its pre-pandemic cabin crew headcount, the spokesman said.
"It is an untenable situation in an industry which has been devastated by COVID-19 and will take many years to recover," Malta Air said in a statement.
“Sadly, without this emergency agreement, which was already agreed by Malta Air pilots, cabin crew job losses can no longer be avoided. As a direct result of the GWU’s failure to deliver upon its agreement with Malta Air, there will be 40 cabin crew redundancies implemented and these job losses will take effect on January 1.”
Backdated pay cuts
The GWU's deputy secretary general, Josef Bugeja, told Times of Malta that the the agreement was not signed because of two issues - the date on which it would kick in and the four-year period for restoring pay cuts.
“Malta Air wanted the collective agreement to be retroactive from June 2020, which we did not agree with as we pushed for the agreement to begin from the date it is signed," he said.
“We proposed an agreement, which is similar in our law, where we reduce the working conditions for four weeks, but Malta Air said that this was not enough.”
Bugeja said that around 90 per cent of Malta Air employees are members of the Union and that 85 percent did not agree on the agreement.
He said the pay cuts would see an initial 6.5 per cent deduction, with further cuts until 2024, when full pay would be restored.
“We want an agreement which is suitable for the employees, but Malta Air was giving us a choice, it is either you accept the four years, or else there will be redundancies," Bugeja said.
The issue dates back to May when Malta Air threatened to make 60 pilots and cabin crew redundant. Bugeja said these redundancies did not take place.
The department of industrial and employment relations is to chair a conciliation meeting between both parties.
PN statement
In a statement, the Nationalist Party expressed solidarity with the workers and asked how, the government, as a strategic partner in the company, did not do all that was possible to prevent the dismissals.
The party said it expected Malta Air not to be so insensitive as to give such news to workers three days before Christmas.
It encouraged the union and the government to do whatever was possible to help the affected workers.