Non-academic staff at the University of Malta have agreed to a new five-year sectoral agreement, the UĦM – Voice of the Workers said on Friday evening.

The deal, which is backdated to 2022 and will run until 2027, brings to an end an industrial dispute that at one point threatened to disrupt students’ exam sessions in January.

Negotiations took two years to conclude and became more heated when the union issued work-to-rule directives to workers, saying the government was not doing enough to reach a deal.

It suspended those directives after students expressed concerns about the directives leading to exam delays.

The collective agreement was negotiated by the UĦM’s education division and approved by the roughly 900 administrative, technical and industrial workers at the university through a series of union meetings where the deal was discussed in detail and then put to a vote.

The UĦM said a majority of workers approved the deal, but stopped short of saying what percentage did so.

It thanked all those involved in negotiations.