The Malta Union of Teachers is suing a rival education union for defamation, it said on Saturday.

In a statement, the MUT accused the Union for Professional Educators of “fabricating and spreading defamatory statements” about the union and its leaders in a press conference and subsequent press release.

The MUT is currently locked in collective agreement negotiations with the government and has put its members on notice that it intends to order a strike on November 27.

It said that it has filed libel proceedings against the UPE in court.

“UPE is not part of negotiations of the sectoral/collective agreement but this does not give it the right to issue defamatory statements about MUT and its leadership. Similarly it cannot issue defamatory statements regarding the negotiations process which is currently being carried out between MUT and the Government,” the MUT said of its rival union.

The UPE has said that it will not join the November 27 strike. In a press conference last week, UPE leader Graham Sansone alleged that the MUT had secretly struck a deal with the government but was threatening to strike as a “demonstration of power” to its members.

Sansone also alleged that the pay increase being mooted was a two per cent one. Education Minister Clifton Grima brushed off that suggestion but stopped short of divulging what sort of increases are being discussed.

Those discussions have so far gotten nowhere, with a second conciliation meeting held on Friday also failing to yield any results.

MUT boss Marco Bonnici told Times of Malta that the government had upped its offer to teachers and other educators but the improved pay package was "still not enough". 

According to public data, teachers currently begin their careers on annual salaries of €24,494, rising to a maximum of €30,844. Those figures exclude an annual class allowance of €2,350 and €650 works resources fund.