Sixty-nine pilots sacked by Air Malta in summer have been offered a public sector job at the equivalent take-home pay of 2018, according to a letter sent to them by the Economy Ministry. 

The letter states that the government was committed to honouring the agreement it had reached with the Airline Pilots Association (ALPA) in 2018 when they were guaranteed an alternative job if they were ever made redundant or lost their jobs with the airline.

Times of Malta revealed contents of this agreement in April. Signed on behalf of the government by former tourism minister Konrad Mizzi in 2018, it was a side agreement to the collective agreement signed by the pilots’ association that same year.

Signed on January 26 by Mizzi and five ALPA representatives, it gave pilots a guarantee of a job in Malta, valid until 2023. There are no Air Malta signatories on the agreement.

This agreement was the major sticking point in discussions with the union over the airline’s intention to make the group redundant, after they refused to accept salaries slashed to the basic €1,200 amid the crisis brought about by COVID-19.

First officers’ salaries range from €50,000 to €80,000, while that of captains vary from €90,000 to €140,000. 

It is not known how many of the sacked pilots are first officers or captains.

Job with government entity until end of 2022

According to a letter that the sacked pilots received on Friday, the job on offer will last until December 31, 2022, and the take-home pay is equivalent to the one they were receiving when the agreement was signed in 2018. 

“The government is committed to honouring this agreement and you are receiving this letter to inform you that you will be offered a job with a government entity in Malta at the same take-home pay as when the agreement was signed. This job will come with a fixed contract that expires on December 31, 2022,” the pilots were told. 

They have five days to accept or decline the offer, and have been instructed to send a reply by email.  

'Still in the dark about nature of job'

Pilots who spoke to Times of Malta said they were still in the dark over what kind of job they were being offered, whether it had anything to do with their line of expertise or whether they will end up doing photocopies in an office. 

According to the Malta Employers Association, the arrangement between the government and the redundant pilots for a job in the civil service was flawed on many counts.

The association said it will create relativity issues wherever these ex-pilots are posted. It also contradicted any notion of equal pay for work of equal value, which the government appeared to strongly advocate, it added.

'Politically-driven agreement will create pressure for wage inflation'

“This politically-driven agreement will also create pressure for wage inflation as employees will make demands to establish relativities with the ex-pilots.”

The MEA said the condition for a “take-home pay guarantee” was made by stealth as a side letter, and was not included in the main body of the collective agreement.

This raised serious questions about governance because side letters usually addressed personal issues and did not involve a major condition of employment.

Companies are obliged to send a copy of a signed collective agreement to the registrar of trade unions, and it was doubtful whether the side letter was submitted with the collective agreement to the Department of Employment and Industrial Relations, the MEA said.

It said it was unjust that some privileged categories of employees had an automatic right to alternative employment with identical conditions if they became redundant, while others in the private sector who lost their jobs had to queue in the unemployment line.

The MEA said that this agreement will be an unnecessary drain on public funds and can have repercussions in collective bargaining in the private sector.

“If Air Malta is foreseeing a recovery in the not too distant future, which may require the airline to employ pilots, it might have made more sense to negotiate a reasonable COVID-19 fallback package, rather than resort to this measure,” the MEA said.