The Malta Union of Teachers is concerned about the government having changed the playing field of the public service collective agreement, which became effective on 1 January 2005, after it allowed another union to unilaterally renegotiate its salary scales, MUT president John Bencini said yesterday.

While stressing that the MUT did not by any means intend to criticise negotiations carried out by any other union, Mr Bencini pointed out that “what is good for the goose is good for the gander”, and he questioned whether teachers could now attempt striking a similar deal so as to better their own pay scales.

Last week the Medical Association of Malta signed an agreement with the government, which saw doctors’ salaries being practically doubled. It led The Malta Independent yesterday to wonder editorially what other professionals in government employment would say. Will the architects, lawyers, university professors and other professional people in government employment be demanding the same conditions as the doctors have obtained? The Malta Independent asked.

Mr Bencini said that while matters such as allowances were able to be renegotiated by different sectors, the renegotiation of pay scales contained in public service collective agreements by any one particular sector had not previously been allowed.

Even in discussions undertaken with the government over the education system reform, Mr Bencini said, teachers as a sector could not renegotiate their salary scales.

But following the recent negotiations with another union whose members fall under the public service collective agreement, the MUT has been inundated with questions from its members as to why different agreements were being struck with different unions.

Mr Bencini described the precedent as having created a “serious problem for industrial relations”.

“Could we now request a revision of teachers’ pay scales?” he wondered.

Other unions, he said, were also worried about the state of affairs, which, he added, was creating a degree of uncertainty.

On the thorny issue of the education system reform, Mr Bencini reiterated that the MUT favoured such a reform as the ways in which Malta’s scholastic system was being run needed to change, while at the same time capitalising on the system’s positive aspects.

The system’s numerous weaknesses, however, also needed to be addressed urgently. These included levels of absenteeism and illiteracy and also that of discipline, which, he said, was not only in decline in Malta but rather the world over. Such issues, he added, could not be solved immediately but should rather be addressed over the long term.

Referring to recent statements by the government to the effect that the MUT was being continuously kept abreast of developments in the reform process, Mr Bencini described the statement as the “joke of the century”.

Mr Bencini also called on the government to urgently find a replacement for outgoing Education Director General Cecilia Borg, who was no longer on the job.

He added that the government’s statement that the education ministry’s permanent secretary was filling the post until a replacement took over was news to the teaching community, which should have been informed that there was actually a person appointed in Ms Borg’s stead.

He also questioned why the new heads for two directorates – that of quality and standards and another for educational services – had not been announced despite the fact that the names of those selected for the posts had been known for some time.