The news last week that the Malta Union of Teachers concluded negotiations with the Government on the new Collective Agreement at MCAST, is most welcome.

The union said, on Thursday, that the agreement will be presented to affected MCAST members in the coming days where a vote by members will be taken. One hopes that the agreement is acceptable for MCAST members and that this will mark the end of the uncertainty at the campus that the prolonged process has caused.

The government took far too long to conclude these negotiations, given that the collective agreement expired over three years ago. The length of time it took to reach agreement took its toll, and the union had for a time issued directives and had held demonstrations as well. The directives also affected the students themselves, who also held a number of demonstrations.

The government cannot let so much time pass when it comes to concluding collective agreement negotiations, as then it is obvious that a union would need to launch directives. What other option would it have?

The whole situation created uncertainty not only for MCAST educators, but the students also.

One understands, of course, that negotiations must take place when it comes to collective agreements, and that both sides have to give and take, so to speak, but surely this process could have been concluded much earlier than this. Over three years is far too long and is a completely unacceptable length of time to leave a collective agreement expired.

It is good that the two sides on MCAST managed to calm things down in the past months, and come together to find agreement.

The Nationalist Party called on the Government and MCAST to ensure that affected students receive the support and opportunities necessary to recover what they lost over these past years, and they should.

Moving forward, now one expects the collective agreement negotiations regarding ITS to also soon come to a close. In an interview with The Malta Independent earlier this year, MUT Chief Marco Bonnici had said that "Traditionally, MCAST and ITS move forward together in terms of working conditions and financial packages. MCAST is much bigger than ITS, so it is reasoned that MCAST has to be the driver when it comes to conditions and financials, and ITS must then come into the structure that will be set." He had said last January that "If we keep moving the way we are on MCAST, ITS will naturally enter into it once we have the MCAST conditions set."

One hopes that, in the future, collective agreement negotiations would close prior to the expiration of such an agreement, or at the very least soon after. It is unfair on workers not to do so.