With the writing on the wall becoming clearer by the day, the Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association is urging the government to keep it informed of decisions being taken with regard to the future of Air Malta, MHRA president George Micallef told The Malta Independent on Sunday.

In the meantime, the General Workers Union said yesterday that it would not accept any “impositions” regarding jobs at the national airline.

Our sister paper yesterday quoted the Prime Minister as saying that experts on airline profitability will be engaged to draw up a report on Air Malta, after which the government will be taking action – which could very likely address the airline’s excess human resources.

“We should be made aware of announcements beforehand and be working on solutions rather than having tour operators call us to ask what is happening,” Mr Micallef said, pointing out that this is what had happened regarding the discontinuation of 11 UK routes next summer.

While saying the MHRA understood that immediate action at the airline was a necessity, Mr Micallef insisted that the association should be more involved in the decision-making process, as the seats lost needed to be replaced. Air Malta was a national asset, generating over 50 per cent of the seat capacity to Malta, he pointed out.

He said that in the past, the national airline had operated in both the national as well as commercial interests, and this was important for the country’s fragile but vital tourism industry, upon which so many other sectors depended.

While appreciating the need for restructuring, he pointed out that the 11 UK routes discontinued this week represented 40,000 seats and the UK was one of the most important markets, accounting for a third of Malta’s incoming tourists.

The austerity measures being resorted to by the UK government, and the falling rate of Sterling against the euro, were already creating challenges, he said. The flight cuts “compound problems” when so much effort had been made to boost seat capacity after 2009. While other airlines will take some of the seats, prices may go up, he said.

“The year ahead is more challenging than the last because of the uncertainties and unknowns,” he said.

While the MHRA wants to be kept in the loop insofar as developments at Air Malta are concerned, the General Workers Union, which represents a good proportion of Air Malta’s staff, is not ready to accept any “impositions”.

“We will not accept anything without the agreement of the employees,” GWU secretary-general Tony Zarb told The Malta Independent on Sunday when contacted.

Air Malta’s restructuring process should have been “more aggressive”, Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi said on Friday, after Finance Minister Tonio Fenech announced plans to seek EU approval for a €100 million capital injection into the national airline during last Monday’s the budget speech. €100 million amounts to about a third of this year’s national education budget.

In an RTK radio interview on Wednesday, Dr Gonzi had been abundantly clear when he said that the time had now come to start discussions with unions, workers and the Opposition on the decisions that had to be taken at Air Malta.

Commercial decisions, he said, had to be taken for the good of the company and the country. The restructuring process, which had been going on for years now, had to be accelerated.

Echoing this statement, Dr Gonzi was yesterday quoted as saying that while the restructuring of Air Malta has been ongoing for the past five years, the process should have been “more aggressive”, especially as oil and fuel prices soared and the financial crisis began to bite.

“It is a strategic asset and we intend it to remain one. But it has to be viable. Like other sectors where we have taken direct action, we have to do the same with Air Malta. This company must be viable – it must be able to stand on its own two feet.”

Asked whether the government, as a shareholder, was going to shed a proportion of jobs, Dr Gonzi said: “We will be engaging the service of experts who really understand the field of airline profitability and once their reports are complete, we will act accordingly.”

But are the unions ready to start discussions and how willing are they to act quickly and accept the possibility of job cuts in order to save this national asset?

In a statement yesterday, the GWU’s Maritime and Aviation Section said it would not accept any impositions that negatively affect Air Malta’s employees. The next steps needed to be decided upon during discussions, in agreement with, and in the best interest of, the employees.

Staff at the national airline are represented by four unions: The Union of Cabin Crew (UCC), The Airline Pilot’s Association (ALPA), the Association of Airline Engineers and the GWU.

When contacted, Charles Agius from the GWU said the union was ready to start discussing Air Malta’s restructuring. He referred to “rumours” about the airline’s situation but said the union had not been officially informed of discussions by either the government or by the company.

“The subject of any discussions needs to be known before we can comment,” he said.

UCC president David Sargent said that while the union was open to discussions, the government must come up with proposals because the section he represents has been consistently meeting with the company and taking cost-saving measures. A case in point was the Memorandum of Understanding for 2003-2007, which was still saving the company “millions”, he said.

“We had taken action to reduce cabin crew numbers before foreign airlines resorted to this option”, he said.

Commenting on the recently discontinued routes, Mr Sargent said that the cuts would affect temporary staff engaged for the summer. However, the union represents some 200 cabin crew employed for Air Malta’s 12-aircraft fleet. 

He noted that the proposed €100 million cash injection was a one-off form of assistance and pointed out that the airline had been contributing to the economy, especially in the past. On the other hand, low-cost airlines received regular financial assistance to market and formulate certain new routes, he added.

“We must wait and see,” he said.

When contacted, Labour Party spokesperson for tourism Marie Louise Coleiro Preca said: “We will have to make Air Malta work and it should never be privatised. The government’s policies over the years have ruined the company and Dr Gonzi was referring to it as a burden during the mass meeting as part of Independence Day celebrations.

“The advice the government has been receiving about the airline and its restructuring was never effective. You cannot take things to the edge and then expect employees to face the consequences,” said Mrs Coleiro Preca, expressing her hope that employees would not be affected.

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