In the last 10 years, Malta’s labour market experienced unprecedented levels of growth and success, fuelled by a buoyant economy across all sectors that has managed to maintain its trajectory even in the face of significant international risks.
Today, the main challenge in our country is not a lack of jobs or limited employment opportunities but, rather, a lack of human resources to fill our vacancies. This scenario has led to the increased internationalisation of the Maltese labour force, attracting talent from all corners of the globe.
The numbers speak for themselves and, now, foreign workers constitute almost a third of the Maltese workforce, with a significant proportion of this cohort coming from outside the EU.
These ever-evolving market dynamics create new opportunities, including the acquisition of new skills and knowledge, as well as new challenges, particularly in terms of the eradication of all forms of labour exploitation, which is an issue that has risen to the fore in recent years both locally and at the EU level.
Indeed, such concerns led to the creation of the EU’s Single Permit Directive, which is intended to facilitate the admission of third-country nationals within the EU in a streamlined, transparent manner. As a socialist government, we stand against all forms of worker exploitation, since we firmly believe that this is an issue that strikes right in the heart of what makes us sustainable and, ultimately, human.
After all, if workers are the cornerstone of our economic and social fabric, then we must do everything we can to ensure that their rights and privileges are protected at all costs, irrespective of their country of origin.
And it is for this reason that we have just launched a new set of regulations for employment and temping agencies, which go above and beyond existing measures mandated by EU directives, as part of our drive to provide a more holistic, robust set of safeguards for our workforce.
The new legislation is intended to standardise and regulate the operations of these agencies that play a vital role in matching workers to vacancies across virtually all sectors of the Maltese economy. Under the new regulations, agencies and businesses that offer similar services would require a licence to operate and would have to undergo a rigorous due diligence process ahead of any issuance of such a licence.
Moreover, the regulations set out a number of conditions related to ethical recruitment that must be adhered to by these operators, including the ban on any requests for payment to foreign workers in order to bring them over to Malta.
Foreign workers constitute almost a third of the Maltese workforce- Andy Ellul
The new regulations also envisage the appointment of a competent person who will act as a point of reference for each licensed agency and who must be a Maltese or EU citizen with significant relevant work experience and/or qualifications. The premises of each agency will be inspected to ensure their suitability and a rigorous vetting process will be undertaken by the police to assess the good conduct of the key personnel (owners, directors and competent person) within each agency.
Failure to adhere to such standards will result in penalties, including fines, blacklisting and licence revocation.
Indeed, as part of the licensing process, agencies will be required to pay a bank guarantee of €20,000 (not applicable to agencies offering solely recruitment services) as well as a sum equivalent to two per cent of annual payroll, up to a maximum of €300,000, which, in the event of licence revocation or non-renewal, shall be disbursed to the employees.
The thinking behind these regulations is clear: a zero-tolerance approach towards any form of worker exploitation, while also ensuring that only those workers whose skills are required by Maltese businesses are brought over to the Maltese islands. In this way, we can verify that the skills of third-country nationals who are seeking employment in Malta complement those of the local workforce, resulting in a better match between vacancy and jobseeker and, ultimately, benefitting workers and employers alike.
In a nutshell, this new legislation represents a tangible step forward by the government to continuously protect and improve working conditions for all. In parallel, it will also complement other notable initiatives including the regulations for platform workers as well as the historic increase in minimum wages that was announced recently, which is also a pillar of our electoral manifesto.
Thus, the new employment agency regulations represent another important piece of the puzzle towards more sustainable, quality-driven economic prosperity.
Andy Ellul is Parliamentary Secretary for Social Dialogue.