On what feels like the umpteenth occasion, there is an industrial dispute concerning the education sector.

After one which impacted government schools, another which had significant and heavy impacts on MCAST until an agreement was finally reached, this time it is the University of Malta which is the institution being affected.

This week, the University of Malta Academic Staff Association (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, the union said.

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.

The industrial dispute is, once again, over talks for the renewal of a collective agreement, and the union said that the industrial action has deepened because 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.

Unfortunately, when it comes to industrial disputes within the education sector, it is almost always the students who end up suffering some form of consequences as a result.

This case is no different than the other cases in different educational institutions: students will now have their exam marks withheld for an unknown period of time, leaving them with a sense of uncertainty over what they have ultimately spent weeks or months working on.

The University's Student Council (KSU) had supported UMASA in its decision to invoke directives last November, and this time lamented 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."

Students are indeed the innocent party in this whole situation - and it would serve both sides of such industrial disputes within this sector to keep that in mind. There is a greater responsibility at hand when taking such actions, precisely because of the impact that they have on innocent parties.

We need authorities who are pro-active in ensuring that things like this - where collective agreements need to be renewed - are handled in a timely manner, before they become a problem.  We need those authorities to also recognise the value of educators and those working within the educational sector and provide them with a package that reflects that value.

We also need the educators and their representatives on the other side of the table to ensure that they are realistic in their demands.  Obviously there is a negotiation process, and when at an impasse, industrial action is a tool that unions can turn to - but educators must also recognise that such action has consequences on third parties.

This is not a comment directly on these talks -the demands that UMASA are making in this instance have not been made known - but a more general principle that would, hopefully, mean less consequences for students to have to bear.