Nurses’ boss given the boot in union election

The president of the Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses has called it a day after the vociferous union leader was effectively voted ‘out’ by placing eighth in the election of 10 council members.

The election took place on Friday, with incumbent secretary-general Colin Galea topping the list with 1,400 votes, followed by Maria Cutajar with about 1,200 votes. 

Pace obtained some 800 votes

Pace’s style often saw him at loggerheads with health ministers from both sides of the House. He told members in his resignation letter that he had always worked in their interest “sometimes quite passionately and literally round the clock”.

During his presidency Pace clinched two sectoral collective agreements and a civil service agreement.

“I can assure you I never hid behind anyone and always tried my best when members bombarded me on the phone on a daily basis, even late at night. It was a great honour representing you for these last eight years.”

Pace was actively on the forefront to convince the government to recruit more nursing staff, remove restrictions on graduate courses and create an information campaign to encourage more people to take up the profession.

He was a critic of both Nationalist and Labour administrations, dubbing the first Labour health minister, Godfrey Farrugia, “a consultant’s lapdog”.

He criticised the present administration for having failed to resolve the bed shortage in Mater Dei and instead “camouflaged corridors as wards”. “Instead of corridors they became things like ‘mixed admissions wards 1, 2, etc’. Nice names. You can play with them all you like… but corridors they were, and corridors they remained…”

Earlier this year he took exception at MaltaToday for revealing that his son, 20-year-old Nicholas, had been employed by the ministry for social solidarity on a ‘person of trust basis’ to act as a procurement officer at the St Vincent de Paul state home for the elderly.

The €21,000 job was granted without any call for applications to take up the post vetting tenders and procurement orders for the hospital.

Pace had then claimed that his son had been “targeted” to the exception of “all the persons of trust employed by all governments”.

Pace even claimed that his role in defending nurses and midwives had made people “envious” enough to hit out at him. “I have nothing to be ashamed of… Rest assured [of] my continuous commitment not to you as members of MUMN only, but also to the good of our professions.”