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Church schools evading moral obligations on recruitment, union claims
Teachers’ union to declare trade dispute with Secretariat for Catholic Education
10 September 2013, 12:00am
Matthew Vella
Matthew Vella
2 min read
The Malta Union of Teachers has declared a trade dispute with the Secretariat for Catholic Education over lack of agreement on recruitment and promotion procedures inside Church schools.
"The Union is reserving the right to resort to industrial action if the situation remains unresolved," the union said, claiming the Catholic education secretariat was denying the right of appeal to candidates for the post of assistant head of school.
The secretariat said that whilst a collective agreement with the MUT provides for the right of appeal in the recruitment of heads of schools, "the agreement does not contemplate such right of appeal in calls for other posts. The fact that the Collective Agreement does not contemplate this right of appeal is not the result of any unilateral action on the part of the Church authorities; it is the result of an agreement freely entered into between the Church authorities and the MUT."
"It appears that the MUT would like to go beyond the terms of the collective agreement. Normally, when a party to an agreement wants to make changes to an agreement, it would normally enter into negotiations with the other party and any changes agreed upon would enter into force after that agreement has been reached. The Church authorities would welcome such an approach to begin discussions in this respect," the secretariat said.
On its part, the MUT said that "principles and procedural aspects based on natural justice and fundamental rights" should be upheld by the Secretariat for Catholic Education.
"There is no need for the same principles to be spelt out in the collective agreement. The Secretariat for Catholic Education should be accountable to its employees and the general public since teaching grades salaries emanate from public funds.
"It is in deed ironic that out of all employers, the Church Secretariat for Catholic Education is clutching to the letter of the agreement in order to circumvent its legal and moral obligations to adhere to basic fundamental rights."
Matthew Vella, a freelance journalist at MaltaToday, was formerly executive editor at Malt...
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MUT has consistently put the convenience and the pockets of the teachers above the education of the children - or their well-being for that matter. I suppose it is their role to take such a view, but for them to then use the "moral obligations" argument when they run out of legal ones is just plain hypocritical.
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The Catholic Church and for that matter many fundamentalistic religions are always clutching to the letter where it suits them....Any one who has had a brush with the church authorities in Malta knows well what they come up with.
