A strike at Air Malta at this stage in the game would be nothing short of tantamount to sounding the death knell for the national airline, and anyone who risks bringing down the airline will be held personally responsible by the public and by their own union members.

The right, and indeed the duty, to protest is one of the most sacrosanct in trade unionism. But even more sacrosanct than that is a union’s overriding duty to protect jobs.

At this juncture, where the European Commission is eyeing every move to best assess the airline’s viability and where the banks are looking at the airline’s debts with an increasingly jittery eye, any such threat jeopardises the airline’s fighting chance for survival, a chance the national airline, once a source of national pride, deserves.

The €52 million in emergency funding granted to Air Malta had been intended to keep the airline aloft for six months, and now close to seven months have passed. That funding has been stretched threadbare and has by now dwindled to near nothingness.

The airline is, in essence, living off its summer cash flow and would be able to just barely survive, albeit still on a wing and a prayer, on its own steam until the end of the season.

The unions representing Air Malta workers meet today to plot the way forward and to perhaps form a common front.

But within this group of unions, there is only one that has threatened a strike, that representing the airline’s pilots – arguably the only union that could effectively ground the airline in a strike. But anyone irresponsible enough to be even contemplating a strike to ground the national airline, especially in its peak season, must also very seriously contemplate the ramifications of their actions.

The threat itself, let alone should that threat be realised, is highly irresponsible and no one should be allowed put a gun to the airline’s head and hold it to ransom. The implications of a strike go far beyond the actual strike itself. Any such uncertainty in the tourism market leads to cancelled bookings since once an airline strikes there can be no real guarantee of how long that strike might last or whether it could recur. Such a strike would also hit the company hard during the profitable summer season when the airline is at the moment able to stand on its own two feet.

A strike would bring it to its knees if not place it six feet under, and in the process place all employees’ job prospects at the airline at serious risk. There are, after all, 800 workers who are to remain employed at the airline. Anyone contemplating a strike action has obviously not spared a thought to those people.

Should the pilots’ threat come to fruition, before you know it the airline would have lost out on enough of its precious summer business, and cash flow, to put it out of business, permanently, and into certain liquidation.

It is this same union of pilots that is seeking to place the blame for the state of the airline on Malta International Airport. It is said that the MIA’s exorbitant fees are what have crippled the national airline.

But, in reality, the rescue plan must provide for a financial turnaround of at least €52 million and, looking at MIA’s total profit levels last year of €16.97 million one is very hard pressed to understand how any renegotiation of MIA’s fees could bring the airline onto an even keel.

The same argument applies to cargo handling, whose profits of roughly half a million euros, which even if increased tenfold, would hardly make a significant impact.

This is not to say that these areas do not need to be improved upon. They do, and the airline’s new management would be very foolish indeed if they were not negotiating with MIA and taking a very serious look at cargo operations. These, however, are no silver bullets and the only truly effective way to set the airline on the correct route is by reducing its workforce, plain and simple.

Pure accounting aside, the European Commission will not approve any rescue plan based on any current staff levels given the basic rule that a company cannot employ more people than it needs, nor will the banks support a plan that they see as simply cosmetic, glossing over the real problems at the airline.

A strike at this point in time would throw the airline to the dogs and its employees, en masse, to the wolves. Unions meeting today need to bear this in mind and decide whether the airline and the employees that are to remain should be given a fair fighting chance, or be permanently grounded.

The ball is in their court, they should think very well before aiming their next shot.