Air Malta's pilots have voted within their union to take industrial action, including possible strikes, in protest over the dismissal of 69 of their colleagues and breaches of the collective agreement and conditions of employment.

The pilots were sacked in June after refusing to have their salaries reduced to the level requested by the airline amid the COVID-19 slowdown.

The Airline Pilots' Association (ALPA) in a statement on Thursday said the airline sacked the pilots just days after having assured it that no pilots would be made redundant.

It said that a few days before the assurance, airline chairman Charles Mangion also declared that the financial packages regulated by the collective agreement would remain untouched.

Proposals described as ‘final’ by the airline, were inexplicably withdrawn hours before a vote about them was due to be taken within the union. 

The union said it was subsequently requested by the airline to forward its own proposals in what was a clear attempt to further stall negotiations.

The proposals were sent to the company on July 11 and the company had not reacted.

"Such delaying tactics are unacceptable. It is clear that Air Malta is negotiating in bad faith and that its only interest is to undermine collective conditions of employment through opportunistic and predatory behaviour. The executive committee is also baffled by the management’s utter lack of direction, as well as by its incapability to conduct and conclude negotiations with long-serving employee representatives," the union said. 

It said it had therefore declared an industrial dispute relating to breaches of  conditions of employment including the unilateral and arbitrary termination of employment, breach of rights enshrined in the collective agreement currently and irregularities in the negotiation procedure preceding the declaration of collective redundancies.

The union said its members had voted overwhelmingly in favour of taking industrial action, including possible withdrawal of service.