From Mr E. Balzan

Although the government has established Legal Notice 51/2007, Supply and other workers covered by this legal notice in the public sector are still unsure about the future of their jobs and are still working with a temporary contract. This is happening even though the Legal Notice does not exclude these workers from being employed on a fixed term contract.

This story started after the government was given a recommendation by the EU and Legal Notice 429/2002 was established. This legal notice stated that employees working for an uninterrupted period of time in the same job had to be given a fixed term contract. What happened? The workers in the public sector were excluded from benefiting from this legal notice! After a lot of hard work by UHM and others (and several reprimands from the EU), five years passed before the government admitted that the workers employed in the public sector had the same rights as those working in the private sector. This admission was made in 2007.

On 7 December 2007, the UHM agreed, with reservations, with the Management and Personnel Office at Castile that all the workers (less those who were classified as having a position of trust due to pending issues with the EU) had to be given a fixed term contract. To date the Management and Personnel Office has still not recognised the right of those workers having a Supply and other grades to be given a fixed term contract like all the other workers. Workers who have been in their present grade for seven years and more have contacted me.

The Government Employees Section within UHM has written several times to the MPO regarding this situation, three press releases have been issued to make our position clear that all the workers who are covered by this legal notice should be given a fixed term contract after holding the grade for a number of years.

In this regard, the Government Employees Section will be organising a meeting for all the workers in these grades and, if our complaints keep falling on deaf ears, we will not have any other alternative but to introduce any industrial actions that are deemed necessary.

Edwin Balzan

Secretary

Government Employees’ Section

UHM