MUT industrial action at MCAST to resume

Industrial action by the Malta Union of Teachers at the Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology will resume on Monday after no agreement was reached, the union said yesterday.

Following intensive meetings between the MUT, the MCAST management and the Industrial Relations Unit (IRU), it is clear that there is no willingness from the IRU to reach an agreement on how to give lecturers what they are due, the MUT said in a statement.

This agreement expired more than a year ago and after long negotiations during this period, the IRU are using delaying tactics to stall negotiations in spite of reconciliation meetings.

In view of all this, the MUT is issuing a fresh list of directives to members to start as from Monday 22nd January 2018 and is announcing a strike of 2 hours each day between 10am and 12pm for Thursday 25 and Friday 26 January 2018.

The union had ordered industrial action in December but withdrew directives in early January, only to resort to fresh industrial action yesterday.

Reacting, MCAST said it was disappointed that MUT had resorted back to and increased industrial actions following a series of long meetings which “registered significant progress towards reaching a final agreement.”

It said the MUT action was completely surprising and unexpected since negotiations were still ongoing and another meeting was scheduled for next Tuesday after agreement from both sides to proceed with the discussions.

It is therefore completely unacceptable that MUT have reactivated and increased industrial actions in this way.

MCAST said that to date agreement had been reached on a number of issues, including to increase the maximum salary for all lecturers to the maximum level proposed by MUT for 2018, on the introduction of a new Senior lecturer grade, on more flexibility in the core hour system which gives greater flexibility to lecturers on when they need to be on campus and on a number of new family friendly measures within the Collective agreement for the first time.

MCAST is also offering to more than double the work resource allowance presently given to lecturers and has also offered a higher rate of payment for additional work carried out by lecturers.

For all the above reasons, MCAST fails to understand the logic whereby MUT have decided to revert and increase industrial actions, thereby stalling negotiations once again at a stage when significant progress had been achieved and negotiations were still ongoing with a meeting scheduled for next Tuesday.

“Unfortunately it seems that MCAST students will now become victims of the internal politics within MUT which were the object of widespread media speculation over the last few days,” MCAST said.