The University of Malta Academic Staff Association (UMASA) has declared that, with immediate effect, university staff are to accelerate industrial action as discussions for a new collective agreement seem to have stalled.
UMASA instructed its members on Wednesday to correct and grade all exams and dissertations, but withhold marks from students for the foreseeable future. Existing measures – i.e., boycotting “any administrative or management meetings, in person or online” – shall remain in place.
Currently, students at the University of Malta are in the middle of their Semester 1 examination period. Exams are scheduled till the end of the first week of this coming February, next week.
UMASA told academic staff that it has decided to heighten its industrial action in this months-long dispute since it has “not yet received an offer that sufficiently approaches [its] demands,” despite holding several meetings with the University of Malta, government officials, and the Ministry for Education.
Academic staff was advised to not attend or organise any administrative or management meetings back in late November 2025, just a couple weeks after publicizing the industrial dispute over the fact that it still had not received a “reasonable offer” for the disputed pending collective agreement.
KSU regrets that students may be adversely affected, to put pressure on Ministry for resolution
The University’s student council (KSU) published a statement in response to this announcement early into Wednesday evening to express its concern that students have been brought into this industrial dispute.
KSU has urged all university students to remain calm in light of these developments, reminding that all exams and theses/dissertations will be assessed and graded while these directives are live, and that the only potential consequence is that students may receive their marks at a later stage should this issue remain unresolved and these measures still active.
The University students published that KSU had supported UMASA in its decision to invoke directives last November. It stated that “over its period of communication with UMASA, the union has made efforts to ensure that as far as possible students are not impacted.”
KSU stated that “the situation should not have reached this stage and that it is worrying that, once again, students have ended up in the middle of an industrial dispute. Students are innocent parties in all this.”
It concluded that the University student council has no say within this industrial dispute, though will be “exerting all possible pressure” for an amicable solution to be achieved between UMASA, the University of Malta, and the Education Ministry as quickly as possible.
“We are prepared to take all possible actions to protect students,” KSU declared.
KSU’s statement was endorsed by numerous student organisations and student representatives.