The government on Tuesday will be publishing an Legal Notice on Tuesday in which the principle of equal pay for work of equal value will be given legal standing, to become effective at the start of next year, Prime Minister Robert Abela said.

In a press briefing on Monday, government officials explained to the media that a legal notice will be published tomorrow, which allows equal pay for equal work amongst all employees including temporary agency workers and outsourcing workers of the same class (meaning those doing the same job type within the same company), regardless of whether they have definite or indefinite contracts.

The legal notice will become effective on 1 January 2025.  Asked by the Malta Independent, experts said that although wiling to implement these new regulations, stakeholders have asked for a grace period for accountancy reasons, given that now labour costs are set to increase.

Apart from this main measure for which the Temporary Agency workers Regulations will be updated, the legal notice also extends the scope of this measure to include workers from outsourcing agencies and ensuring pay parity from day one of an assignment.

This legal notice follows a 2008 European directive which was meant to transpose EU Temporary Agency Workers into Maltese law. The first reactionary step was done in 2010 after the government enacted the Temporary Agency Workers Regulations, which came into force on December 5 2011.

In 2023, The Malta Independent had revealed how a similar legal notice was also published in 2018 (legal notice 272), but it had never been mentioned in the main law regulations. Back then, when asked about it, Parliamentary Secretary for Social Dialogue Andy Ellul could not provide a clear answer. On the contrary of this new legal notice, the 2018 one only allowed equal pay after four weeks of employment.

In an interview with The Malta independent in 2023, PN MP Ivan Castillo had said that although legal notice 272 of 2018 is technically considered as law since its publication date, it was never included or referred to in the temporary agency workers’ regulations, which means that anyone looking them up will not get to know about the legal notice.

In a press conference that followed the briefing, the Prime Minister Robert Abela said that "the Government believes in social dialogue and we sat around the table as we did with other initiatives such as the Social Pact for the increase in the National Minimum Wage and the Stability initiative."

On his part, Ellul said that apart from equal pay, this legal notice also ensures equal working conditions.