It-Torċa and L-Orizzont editor-in-chief Victor Vella, who was suspended last month, is to be reinstated, but only as editor of the Sunday paper, his employer Union Print said.

Vella was undergoing disciplinary proceedings and risked being sacked after a career of 27 years in journalism for the newspapers of the General Workers' Union.

But the company issued a statement on Saturday night saying they had discussed matters with Vella and agreed that the suspension should be ended.

“Victor Vella is therefore expected to return to work to continue fulfilling his duty as editor responsible only for the newspaper it-Torċa,” the company said.

Sources said his employers may have given in following a public outcry on the media and internal pressure from within the GWU's own organs.

Last week, sources close to Vella’s newsroom said they believe he was suspended after refusing to stop publishing stories about workers’ rights, migration and social injustices. They said the GWU’s bosses were unhappy with his editorial policy because it put the government in a bad light, adding that “migration was one of their biggest bones of contention”.

It is understood the pressure from the union administration on the newsroom had been going on for the past months, during which both L-Orizzont and it-Torċa ran stories about people working on low salaries and in precarious conditions, people struggling to cope with the rising cost of living, people facing housing difficulties, and a report on the surge in food prices in supermarkets.

Union Print is owned by the General Workers Union. Union president Victor Carachi is listed as the publisher's sole director.

Last week, a GWU spokesperson denied that Vella’s suspension had any link to the newspapers' editorial line and described it as a "purely administrative matter". 

The GWU spokesperson said the union would be assisting Vella in his disciplinary proceedings with Union Print, its own subsidiary.

In an opinion piece on MaltaToday on Thursday, former journalist Karl Schembri claimed Vella had been suspended by the CEO of Union Print for “insubordination for setting headlines without his permission” and for “not publishing a couple of opinion columns by Labour Party candidates”.

Schembri wrote that the accusations were “very indicative of the union leadership’s North Korean idea of the job description of a newspaper editor”.

Efforts to contact Vella on Saturday proved unsuccessful.