Air Malta cabin crew still waiting for retirement schemes

The Air Malta cabin crew are the only employees at the national airline who have not been offered the early and voluntary redundancy schemes. Air Malta’s management have failed to answer the cabin crew union’s plea to close negotiations and finalise the agreement. However, the Union of Cabin Crew expressed its optimism that a deal will be reached next week.   

In its restructuring plan, Air Malta plans to reduce employee numbers by more than 500. Currently, Air Malta employs 65 pursers and 148 cabin crew. The airline is aiming to reduce the cabin crew from 213 to a full-time equivalent of 192 pursers and cabin crew during the winter low season and 220 for the summer season. This means that Air Malta will seek to employ part-time cabin crew to make up the numbers during the summer season.

On 9 December 2011, Air Malta said it would be launching its voluntary redundancy and early retirement schemes within a week. However, not all the schemes have been issued. The airline has been delaying the schemes for its cabin crew for over a month.

The delay was being caused by a number of disagreements between Air Malta, the Ministry of Finance and the UCC. One of the main bones of contention had to with the requirements for future cabin crew recruitment.

The Ministry of Finance denied the existence of any disagreement and said that all schemes have been issued. When asked to provide further comment the Ministry referred MaltaToday to the airline’s communication office. 

The UCC asked the airline’s management over a week ago to conclude negotiations, however it is still awaiting a reply. The UCC president David Sargent told MaltaToday “At the moment, the UCC committee is still awaiting the final document from Air Malta of what was agreed by both parties.” Sargent expressed his optimism and said all other pending issues between the UCC and Air Malta were sorted and added “hopefully we will conclude early next week”.

The national airline told MaltaToday that it has already reached an agreement with two unions on the Voluntary and Early Retirement schemes. It said the schemes for the Engineers were launched on 22 December 2011 and will close on 20 January 2012, while the scheme for the sections represented by the General Workers Union were launched on 2 January 2012 and will close on 3 February 2012.

Air Malta said employees who had already found a job before the schemes where officially launched were given the opportunity to apply before the launch date. It said their release date was communicated to them according the company exigencies. The airline said it intends to hold a meeting with the UCC next week, to conclude the negotiations and sign the agreement.

With regards to the language question, Air Malta was pushing for the removal of Maltese as a requirement at O-Level and the Ministry of Finance and the Union of Cabin Crew opposed this measure. The national airline bizarrely proposed to replace the Maltese language prerequisite with requiring foreign cabin crew employees to learn Maltese within six months. This move is an indication of Air Malta’s intentions to recruit foreign cabin crew in place of Maltese employees. However, the airline said it had no such intentions, and said it will continue recruiting Maltese-speaking cabin crew.

Air Malta confirmed it will not remove requirements for Maltese language skills and said existing recruitment policies will remain in place. The airline stated it will continue to recruit and employ Maltese-speaking crew. An Air Malta spokesperson said that “80% of Air Malta’s passengers are visitors from abroad and the airline will continue to expect multi-lingual capability among our cabin crew to make all our customers feel at home on our flights.”

The UCC confirmed an agreement was reached on the language question however did not divulge the nature of other points of contention which stalled the agreement. UCC president David Sargent said: “The question of the Maltese language being omitted as a requirement to apply for vacancies as cabin crew was proposed by the management but it has since been agreed that Maltese will be a requirement.”

The airline’s new management was pushing to recruit new cabin crew in possession of five O-Level passes without qualifying the required languages or subjects. The airline’s new management was proposing to replace the Maltese language requirement with spoken and written fluency in English.

Additionally, the airline was proposing to replace the O-Level requirement with speaking and writing skills and the ability to read announcements and company documents in English. Air Malta was also asking for fluency in a second language but said this was not “essential”.