The Union Haddiema Maqghudin has filed a warrant of prohibitory injunction against the Director for Employment and Industrial Relations calling for a union majority verification exercise to be held only after the demerger takes place.

MEPA will be split in two with the establishment of the Malta Planning Authority and the Malta Environment Authority. Presently, UHM enjoys a majority at MEPA. It represents technical and clerical staff. The professional staff are represented by the in-house UPAP union. MEPA respects two separate collective agreements bargained by the two unions.

UHM said that the verification exercise should not be carried out now, seeing that employees are likely to be shuffled around between the two authorities and their various sections in the demerger.

If a verification exercise is carried out now the process cannot be repeated before a year elapses. This could lead to a scenario where some of the new sections would not be represented by the union which enjoys a majority. These workers would therefore not be represented by the majority union when bargaining for a new collective agreement.

UHM Secretary General Josef Vella told the press this morning that this was a pointless exercise. He said this was a manoeuvre by MEPA to distract the unions from the demerger by drawing the focus on verification.

The warrant was signed by lawyer Deborah Mifsud Attard and Legal Procurator Daniel Aquilina.