Meeting between MUMN, government to be held today
Today at 3pm a meeting will be held between the government and the Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses (MUMN) to discuss the proposals for a new sectoral agreement, MUMN President, Paul Pace, has informed The Malta Independent.
The last set of proposals made by the government received a resounding “no” from the vast majority of members in the union.
Then, during a press conference on Wednesday, Pace said that the union sent a letter to the Health Minister asking for a meeting to conclude this sectoral agreement. The union did not specify a timeframe for when it wants this issue to be resolved. Pace had said that the MUMN will not issue industrial action directives for now, but will give the government “another chance” for it to offer a stronger financial package.
“I’m hoping they called the meeting because they’re coming up with better counterproposals than what the nurses voted against”, Pace said when he was asked to give an update on the meeting that the union had requested.
He clarified that he does not expect everything to conclude after one meeting, but that the MUMN will attend the meeting and will then “take it from there.”
An Extraordinary General Meeting was called two weeks ago, whilst suspending its industrial actions to give members of the MUMN the chance to vote on whether the last set of government proposals were acceptable or not. The EGM was held last week, and nearly all nurses and midwives who attended an extraordinary general meeting had voted no to the financial package that the government had offered.
During the Extraordinary General Conference held on 18 April, 97.6% of the nurses and midwives who attended had voted against, while 1% had voted in favour. 1.4% were invalid votes. Present were 804 nurses and midwives. The union had said that this was the largest-ever participation in a General Conference since the union’s foundation in 1996.
Pace had said that the overall outcome of the proposed agreement was that nurses and midwives will continue to be the least-paid health professionals. “That’s what broke the camel’s back”, Pace had said.