A crash landing for Air Malta pilots

Air Malta has taken what has been described as ‘an unprecedented step’ by discharging - on redundancy grounds - 108 pilots from its staff of 134, after the Airline Pilots Association (ALPA) refused to take a radical pay cut of €1,200 a month due to the coronavirus grounding all flights.

Air Malta offered unions representing different sections of company employees, the minimum floor of the average pay of the last twelve months, capped at €1,200, as basic monthly income which would be applicable for all those on indefinite and definite contracts, meaning that all employees, including staff at head office, engineers, cabin crew, and pilots would get a minimum income of €1,200 monthly even if they are not required to operate and stay at home.

It is understood that the Engineers’ union accepted this proposal.

ALPA decided to link the issue resulting from the airline being mostly grounded because of the COVID-19 pandemic with their request to ‘be partners at the same table to discuss the airline’s restructuring.’ Linking the two issues - the current situation because of the pandemic and the proposals for the long-term restructuring of the airline - was stupid and short-sighted.

According to reports, the company wanted the pilots to utilise their paid vacation that was carried forward from 2019 plus all of 2020; work reduced hours leading to a reduction of around 40%-80% of their salaries; and then go to forced unpaid leave, to be called only on as ‘as needed’ basis.

Admittedly, these conditions signify a drastic reduction in pilots’ income - but they would also have meant that no pilots would lose their job. The pilots’ union refused the offer and this led to the company calling their bluff, so to say, and discharge 108 pilots.

Usually, the pilots’ union negotiates from a position of strength. Even the ‘coincidence’ of a large number of pilots reporting sick would put Air Malta’s schedules in disarray - let alone an official strike.

What ALPA did not seem to realise is that in the current situation, all its strength to call the shots has dissipated into thin air because of the current situation created by the pandemic. Stopping or delaying flights cannot put the airline in a worse economic position that it currently finds itself in. Threatening to resign and finding a job with another airline has also become an impossibility.

What surprises me is how the union did not realise the weak and precarious situation in which they find themselves when dealing with the airline under the current situation.

Even worse, they did not realise that refusing to co-operate with the company in the current circumstances could hardly win any sympathy from the rest of the citizens of Malta.

More so when it is publicly known that average gross salaries are €140,000 annually for captains and an average of €80,000 for first officers. Without flying - as at the moment - pilots would still have substantial salaries that Air Malta cannot afford when 18 of its usual 20 daily flights are suspended.

In other words, the clout of the pilot’s union has dissipated and its well-known mulish attitude has led it to what can only be considered as a veritable suicide or, in flying terms, a deliberate crash landing!

As a result, when the world returns to normal - some day, some time - the pilots’ union will not be able revert to what it was ‘in the old days’.

Little Hitlers

The decision taken by ‘Identity Malta’ not to extend the interim permit for children of third country nationals awaiting the outcome of their appeals that could no longer be decided was a stupid short-sighted one. The Immigration Appeals Board is currently not meeting due to the current circumstamces. The letters were sent to six children, whose parents live and work in Malta.

The government reacted by declaring that children of non-EU families facing deportation will not be sent home and that the letters they had received from Identity Malta should never have been issued. Meanwhile the identity of the bosses at ‘Identity Malta’ who took the original decision to send the letter is not known. Whether any sort of disciplianary steps against whoever made the decision is also unkown.

This is yet another example of people that, in the English idiom developed since World War II, are referred to as ‘Little Hitlers’, although I usually prefer to call them ‘tin pot dictators’. The stereotype example is the petty government clerk with the power to stamp some application form or certificate, wallowing in his ‘importance’ stemming from the need of ordinary citizens to have their documents properly stamped.

These people are found in so many places: it could be a traffic warden flaunting his ticket producing machine or some Planning Authority case or enforcement officer trying to be clever by half. Consistently, we meet these tedious functionaries who take advantage of whatever power they have in order to annoy and to frustrate others just for their personal gratification.

The fact that there is an English idiomatic expression about these people shows that this is no Maltese phenomenon; it is in fact a universal human trait.

Conflict of interest?

Last Wednesday ‘The Times’ reported that a partial decision of the Constitutional Court had dismissed the arguments made by the Attorney General in a case made by a Gozitan lawyer who had submitted that PA boards are inherently biased in favour of development applications and that this impinges on the provisions of the Maltese Constitution and the European Convention of Human Rights.

The argument is that there is a lack of fair hearing in Planning Boards because, amongst others, they are composed of architects who also work in private practice or work with firms that are involved in development.

This is, indeed, a moot point.

Nominating on the different Planning Commissions only architects who are not currently involved in development - directly or in directly - would be ideal.

The downside of this would be the fact that those who have not had hands-on experience in development would not appreciate certain situations.

Perhaps choosing retired architect would be a better option. By the way, I would not qualify as one.