Letters undistributed as postal workers stay home

Mail went unprocessed and undistributed yesterday after Maltapost told employees not to report for work in reaction to industrial action ordered by the Union Haddiema Maghqudin.

However, the postal service is now expected to return to normal after agreement was reached over manning levels at the company during marathon talks held yesterday. Postmen will be back on their beat this morning, a Maltapost spokesman said.

The union's public entities section secretary, Jesmond Bonello, said the majority of the company's workers did not report for work yesterday. Only the management and counter workers turned up.

Mail was not processed and distributed, although the union had agreed that it should be collected from letter boxes by the management and kept in a safe place.

The two parties had also agreed in talks on Sunday that employees who did not report for work yesterday would not suffer any pay or leave deductions.

The dispute started when the union accused the management of failing to honour an agreement reached in May over the recruitment of workers. It argued that employees were finding it difficult to take their vacation leave regularly because of the shortage of workers.

Maltapost, on its part, argued that it had been obliged by government policy to recruit people who were redeployed from other government entities, including the dockyard, but wanted the government to allow it to obtain an ETC permit to issue a call for applications.

On Friday, the UHM directed its members not to use telephones and computers, accept or process bulk posting, parcels and registered letters, collect boxes, distribute local council tickets and unaddressed mail and not to distribute and process mail sent and addressed to government departments and entities.

In reaction, Maltapost told the employees not to report for work yesterday.

Agreement over the issue was reached last night after six and a half hours of negotiations at the Information Technology and Investments Ministry.

The union said that under the agreement the company would engage, within a week, the number of workers effectively agreed to in May.

The ministry, which led the talks, said the union had agreed that the process of filling vacant posts would continue by means of an offer made to former workers of the Drydocks, Public Broadcasting Services, Malta Development Corporation, Institute for the Promotion of Small Enterprises, Metco and Maltpost itself.

The ministry added that Maltapost had identified 20 former dock workers to fill the posts, and they had been certified as fit to do the work of postmen.

However, nine of these workers had then turned up with a specialist's certificate saying they were not strong enough for this type of work. Another had to be let go because he proved to be inefficient.

Thus there now remained 10 posts yet to be filled, and the government would continue to do its best to fill them before Monday.