Collective or sectorial agreements often aim for wage rises either by directly touching the salary scales or by going for additional allowances. The latter is more likely to be negotiated. So, nowadays we hear of allowances for this and allowances for that, all of which will be unconsidered when it comes to pension claims. But anyway, this is not the point I want to stress.

What I wish to convey is that allowances are not always the best option for stress at work. Giving more money to the workers (who can either be professionals or manual workers) will, at times, make them even unhappier! Strange indeed! But why? Because wage rises are usually tied with more productivity. Now, certain classes of workers are already working long hours on end and it is useless giving them additional income if they have very little free time to enjoy it. They may even get more frustrated if at certain periods of the year they may have to face situations of stop leave. Because let’s face it; what’s the use of having a million euros in your bank account when you hardly have time to even see your spouse and children!

A typical example of what I’m trying to convey refers to certain types of health care professionals. Why is it that immaterial of how much these people earn, they never seem to be happy and relaxed in their work? Why do we always hear of brain drain in health? Probably it’s the pressure or stress of work these people have to endure coupled with lack of free time availability that is causing all this.

On the other hand, if you consider teaching, which is, especially nowadays, also a stressful job, we surprisingly never hear of academic brain drain. As a matter of fact, on another paper (Torca, 22 March) I read that last year around 60 teachers resigned. Then I concluded that out of a total of around 6,000 teachers (to say the least), this amounts to only one per cent. Moreover, the same article which had made front-page headlines continued to say that the major part of this fraction of resignations was felt at MCAST. This continues to strengthen my thinking that free time availability is crucially important at preventing stressed workers from resigning because despite the fact that MCAST lecturers have higher wages, they are entitled to fewer holidays than school teachers. So, if one had to eliminate the MCAST figures from the statistics, we can conclude that the actual teachers’ resignation figures are even less than one per cent.

But stress at work is a common denominator for both medical and teaching professions. So, what is that thing that makes health professionals continue to resign, at times leading to problems such as the closure of some health centres, while on the other hand, keeps the teachers in schools and thus permits the government to open a new school each year? The reason is obvious: free time availability for stressed employees. Some are glorified with surplus, while others have to survive on a meagre 192 hours or so of vacation leave. The lack of teaching staff is not mainly due to the resignations but because fewer and fewer students are applying for the primary school degree course at university. Again... what is the major difference between primary and secondary education teaching. It’s free time availability!

It is high time union leaders start looking at workers’ rights form this perspective. Workers also have to realise that money is not everything in life. On the contrary, money makes you more desperate because the more you have the more you want. And please for the authorities especially those with social conscience, kindly realise that the sun rises equally the same for every worker. I am not expecting that a surgeon gets the same pay of a labourer, not at all, but when it comes to basic necessities like free time entitlement (which includes hours of work per week, vacation leave and holidays), I don’t expect to see such great discrepancies between Maltese workers, especially now that we are supposed to be one Europe.

If extra leave is only wishful thinking then alternatively, certain categories of over-worked professionals should at least be liberally allowed to go home early, even if this means that they may have to finish their clerical work in the comfort of their homes!

C. Micallef

Fgura