MUT council seeks term extension to tackle pending agreements, disputes

The Malta Union of Teachers is holding an extraordinary general meeting on 14 June to ask members to extend the council’s term by six months.

The council wants its term extended so that it can conclude talks and oversee the implementation of several pending work agreements.

One of these agreements is the sectoral agreement for State and church school educators, which was met by criticism from educators when the union presented it to its members. MUT was forced to postpone the vote on the agreement.

Earlier this week, the Education Ministry sent a personalised email to all educators in State schools explaining the benefits of the package agreed with the MUT. The sectoral agreement includes generous increases in allowances and progression in pay scales for most grades. However, the union faced flak from veteran teachers who are already in the highest pay scale possible since they did not benefit from scale progression.

Subsequent talks, led to the introduction of a new allowance for this grade, however the package has not yet been put to a vote.

But the union is also locked in a trade dispute at MCAST over stalled talks on a new agreement there. Industrial action ordered last month is still in force.

The extraordinary general conference was called by MUT President Marco Bonnici and is motivated by the prevalent extraordinary circumstances, involving pending agreement negotiations and trade disputes.

According to the notice to members, the EGM will discuss only one motion that was proposed unanimously by the MUT council to extend its term in office by six months until December.

“This is to enable the satisfactory conclusion of negotiations and subsequent implementation of the four main agreements, namely the state sectoral agreement, the Church collective agreement, the MCAST agreement and the ITS agreement,” the council said.

MUT paid-up members who want to attend the EGM must complete the registration form available on the MUT website by Wednesday at noon.