Updated | Teachers in state, church schools on strike on 8 November

The Malta Union of Teachers have announced a teachers’ strike on 8 November, after declaring a trade dispute with the government in relation to the financial stage of sectoral agreement negotiations.

Marco Bonnici, MUT president, said that the MUT would also be putting forth 50 directives for all grades of teachers, the first set of which will be announced later today and will start applying from Monday. An incremental number of other directives will be announced daily.

Bonnici said that the strike and directives will apply to all government and church schools, which will be on strike for the whole day, as well as to MCAST and ITS, who will strike for an hour.

Negotiations with government had failed when it came to discussions on financial proposals, Bonnici explained. The union was requesting a pay rise of more than 20 percent for all grades of teachers, but the government’s proposal was for less than a five percent increase over a five year period.

“The government’s proposed five percent increase is too low, miserable and an insult to our profession,” Bonnici said.

The MUT maintains that teachers have not seen an increase in salaries, contrary to other professions which have enjoyed pay rises throughout the past few years. It said that despite reassurances from high ranking government members that teachers’ salaries will be brought up to par with those of other government employees, this had not materialised.

The pay rises were not enough to address the problem of teachers’ low salaries, nor did it help solve the crisis of teachers leaving the profession and young people not choosing to become teachers, Bonnici said.

He added that it was clear that the government was not ready to change its financial proposals, despite being given ample time to present an acceptable financial suggestions, and the union would thus be issuing directives to teachers as a way forward.

Government Reaction:

The government, in a statement issued in reaction to MUT’s announcements, reiterated that it would be working for better conditions for teachers, which it said had been forgotten throughout 25 years of Nationalist administrations.

It was not acceptable for the current admistration that teachers, learning support assistants and kindergarten assistants had between 2005 and 2013 been given amongst the least allowance increases out of 135 pay rises to various civil service salary scales, the government said.

It said it hoped for and had faith that an agreement would be reached with the teachers’ union, and noted that this had been laid out in the government’s electoral manifesto as well as being mentioned by the Prime Minister. Electoral proposals were always realised in a relatively short span of time, and this would also be the case in this situation.

The education ministry would be keeping parents updated on the situaton with regular notifications on education.gov.mt and by SMS, the government said.