The “general and overarching sentiment” of the pilot community is that Air Malta has persistently negotiated in bad faith and has taken advantage of current circumstances, ALPA, the airline pilots union said on Wednesday.
It was reacting to an Air Malta statement in which the airline said the pilots had refused an offer that would have secured the jobs of pilots who were recently made redundant.
Air Malta said all pilots would have returned to full pay by 2023, but added that the returning pilots would have to relinquish an €800,000 retirement scheme while all pilots would lose their drivers.
ALPA said the proposals were rejected by 96% of the votes cast by the members who were retained in employment by the company. “Moreover, none of the said members voted in favour thereof.”
“This result reflects the general and overarching sentiment of the pilot community that, over the past months, Air Malta has persistently negotiated in bad faith and has taken advantage of the current circumstances in an attempt at forcing the Association’s hand to renounce to core rights deriving from its members’ freedom of association,” it said.
“The current industrial unrest was also characterised by insults levied by the members of Air Malta’s senior management team throughout the said negotiations, especially by the behaviour exhibited by company officials over the past weeks.”
ALPA also insisted that Air Malta’s proposals are “divisive in nature and discriminate between the conditions of employment offered to employees who were retained in employment and between those offered to members whose employment was unjustly terminated.”
The union said it had, in fact, proposed a 50% pay-cut across the board, “which would have done away with such unjust difference in treatment, while also keeping
in line with the company’s financial projections.”
These proposals would in effect translate to a 70% pay cut in actual take home pay, for a good number of those pilots made redundant.
“Throughout the past months, Air Malta has embarked on a quest to obliterate core employee rights contained in the Collective Agreement currently in force, notwithstanding that such rights have no bearing on the financial situation of the company or on the circumstances occasioned by the Covid-19 pandemic.”
It added that Air Malta’s claim that these proposals would have secured the employment of its mambers were “false and misleading.”
“The company has repeatedly stressed that the conclusion of an agreement is dependent on ALPA’s renunciation to the rights contained in the Agreement entered into with the Government of Malta on 26th January, 2018. By means of such Agreement, the Government of Malta had provided work-related guarantees to the members of the Association, as well as a guarantee that the conditions of employment contained in the Collective Agreement currently in force would be safeguarded until the signing of a new Collective Agreement.”
ALPA said its members are also “perplexed by the fact that, whereas the Government has provided financial assistance to businesses and employees negatively affected by the pandemic, it has failed in its duty to safeguard the employment of longserving workers who have dedicated the best part of their lives to the national airline.”