Lufthansa Technik Malta yesterday announced the conclusion of “two milestone collective agreements” with the Association of Airline Engineers (Malta), also known as AAE, and the Union Haddiema Maghqudin, which represents the company’s employees.

The company said the conclusion of the two collective agreements was a critical precondition to the investment project negotiated between Lufthansa Technik Malta and the Maltese government.

Lufthansa said the key issue in the discussions was the need for agreements of a longer duration. In fact, both collective agreements expire on 31 December 2012; the usual practice locally is for agreements to have a duration of three years.

The agreements also introduce a flexible working hour model that ranges between 32 and 48 hours, subject to the company’s exigencies and pre-advice to employees.

Lufthansa said that, due to the seasonality experienced in the industry, a banking of hours system that has a plus and minus hours threshold has been introduced to provide the company with more flexibility.

“The successfully concluded agreements provide growth and development opportunities for current and future employees of Lufthansa Technik Malta. These agreements are a significant step forward by way of final preparation for the launch of our major expansion project. Our plan envisages that the first aircraft as part of this new project is scheduled to be in the new hangar in October 2008,” said Lufthansa Technik Malta chief executive Louis Giordimaina.

The AAE agreement was signed by the chairman of the LTM-AAE group committee, Kevin Mallia and the secretary Mark Spiteri, as well as the other two committee members of the Lufthansa Technik Malta group committee, in the presence of AAE president and vice-president, Stefan Grech and Ing. Adrian Rizzo, respectively.

The UHM agreement was signed by secretary-general Gejtu Vella and Manufacturing and Services Section secretary Nicholas Baldacchino, as well as group committee members.

On the company’s side, both agreements were signed by Thomas Stueger, director of Lufthansa Technik and member of the Lufthansa executive board, CEO Louis Giordimaina and Human Resources manager Antoinette Caruana.

While AAE negotiated on behalf of certifying staff and graduate engineers, UHM represented support staff, technical and production staff, materials and logistics employees and administration.