Teachers on strike? It may be every pupil’s dream but finance minister Tonio Fenech seems to have set himself on a dangerous course by picking a fight with a union that is toying with a general strike.

The university professors are huffing, puffing, and slamming down their mortar boards on the desks. Ahead of a crucial budget for Lawrence Gonzi and finance minister Tonio Fenech, in which promised tax cuts will surely be nowhere to be seen after the pre-electoral spending spree, the academic staff at the University of Malta is up in arms over a collective agreement that’s already five years overdue.
John Bencini, the president of the Malta Union of Teachers (MUT), has threatened to order a general strike across the entire educational sector if government does not budge from what they see as an unprecedented ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ stance.
In recent weeks, attempts by the MUT and the university lecturers’ house union UMASA to get government to consider their proposals for higher salaries have been met with a firm refusal by Fenech, a move which Bencini describes as “a threat that took the country back to the 1980s.” If a deal won’t be reached, the unions will take matters to the next level, ordering strikes across the board from kindergarten to secondary, MCAST, ITS, and at university. Some 700 academic staff were absent from the traditional ceremony marking the start of the new university year last week, who boycotted the event in protest against failed negotiations to renew their collective agreement.
With his owlish gaze and seemingly exasperated tone, Bencini fits the teachers’ bill just fine. But his words are fighting ones, and the union boss means business now that Fenech appears to have spurned the union on two accounts: first by giving the two unions an ultimatum on his wage offer; and then by publishing the union’s demands, which Bencini says are inflated.
Academics’ salaries have been left untouched since their collective agreement ended back in 2003, with the issue lying dormant for the past five years due to a three-year long dispute between the two unions, who battled over who had majority recognition of University of Malta academic employees. UMASA came into being as a house union for university academics specifically, closing the doors to other academic staff employed by the University of Malta – namely the teachers at the Junior College sixth form, who are also appointed by the university senate.
The two unions took the issue of who had majority recognition over University academics to the Industrial Tribunal, which declared that while a distinction was to be retained in terms of the work carried out by university lecturers on one hand and Junior College lecturers on the other, discussions on the collective agreement would be led by the MUT for both sides.
“The disagreement between the two unions over the last five years meant that we were absent on the issue of hammering out the new collective agreement. Now the UMASA and the MUT are both collaborating with each other, over not just a collective agreement for both university and Junior College lecturers, but also on a reform package on their rights and obligations,” Bencini says.
Hardly a show of solidarity from the university union, which still closes its doors to colleagues at the Junior College. The sixth form lecturers surely cannot be too pleased with such snobbery.
“Well, that’s a question often asked by Junior College lecturers. When the government founded the Junior College, the MUT was against the Sixth Form becoming an organ of the University of Malta. Many of our members who were in disagreement with us eventually left the MUT.
“Today the Junior College is a state of fact. That was what the government wanted back then, when education was Michael Falzon’s responsibility. Peter Serracino Inglott also had a role in this idea.”
Bencini says he still does not know what the idea exactly was in incorporating the Sixth Form into the university structure. “Some say it was there to beef up the statistics for tertiary education.”
Still, with that debacle behind the two unions, both sets of lecturers are now united in starting their battle for higher wages which they say are amongst the lowest in Europe.
“The relations between both unions are excellent today, and we’re working together for the benefit of workers’ rights,” Bencini says.
And it is in this spirit of their newfound harmony that, Bencini says, both unions want to see a reform in the work practices of university and Junior College academics, along with their obligations and salary structure, that will move the University of Malta forward – which also happens to be, the motive for the current strained relations between government and the two unions.
In a nutshell, the unions want to improve conditions for academics and address justifiable criticism made in their regard. The reform however carries a price tag, an investment which for a government strapped for cash, appears too costly, despite education being both a personal mission and a pillar of Gonzi’s administration.
“We’re moving into 2009 and we’re asking ourselves: ‘what must be changed at the University of Malta and what is wrong?’. What are the problems and the criticisms of students and parents?” Bencini says.
And the answer to such questions?
“Well… this is reform, not simply an eight-page collective agreement. The university rector wants to gradually reform the university, and he is looking at certain work practices that must be slowly brought to an end. One could mention lecturers not turning up for their lessons. Or the reasons why they don’t, probably because of some consultancy with the government itself… rather than being a consultant for research at the university itself. These few cases basically throw the university system into disrepute.”
But while the changes and proposals that outline the vision of reform at the university have already been hammered out by both the unions and the university, it is over their price tag that the unions and government are currently at loggerheads.
“We don’t want bad work practices and we want to improve the university… but this package, this reform, costs money,” Bencini states. “You have to pay for this reform. It’s a reform that concerns the obligations and responsibility of lecturers, how they must be held responsible for any shortcomings, consultancy and research duties towards the university… surely things which not every lecturer might welcome. For example, lecturing hours should be extended to 8pm to allow working students to attend lectures in the evening.”
So how much are the university lecturers paid? Not exactly the highest of salaries for the people who guide some of the country’s best minds to their own highly-paid positions. A university professor today has a gross basic pay of €31,881 (approx. Lm13,000). A senior lecturer today has a gross salary of €27,769. An assistant lecturer gets €20,300.
But while the MUT and UMASA are not yet divulging their latest offer, namely a revised figure after their first offer was turned down by the government, the Ministry of Finance has declared its position was final and that “the Government is not in a position to increase the financial offer.”
To make matters worse, minister Tonio Fenech incurred the unions’ ire when he published the figures of their offers, allegedly inflating the gross salaries to include maximum performance bonuses awarded to each and every employee for the next six years. A spend of €140 million for the entire period.
Bencini begs to differ, saying the government’s inflated figure is double that which the unions are proposing for the reform package. Bencini says the two unions' offer was extrapolated from salary structures from foreign universities. However the unions stuck to benchmarks from Cyprus, which like Malta is a small, Mediterranean EU member state, with a similar gross domestic product.
“We didn’t ask for German salaries. Over there even a police officer is paid five times the amount officers are paid here. We found Cyprus to be a similar country that is easily comparable to Malta. Cypriot salaries, including that for the teaching professions, are at least three times Malta’s average salary. But we didn’t just take those salaries. We factored in the difference between Malta’s and Cyprus’s GDP, and the wage increases which the academic staff did not take in the last five years.”
But shouldn’t the benchmarking have been carried with more realistic Maltese living standards and salaries?
“You’re right. That’s precisely why we factored in the GDP. We realise Malta is not oil-rich, but if you don’t pay the teachers these people are just going to up and leave,” Bencini says, who is vocal about the threat facing a profession that is increasingly losing young teachers who grow dissatisfied with the job early on in their career.
“We’re going to have a brain drain with these salaries. When you are appointed to a university post, you have to get your PhD within eight years, or else you are out. And the PhD alone will actually pull people to higher-paid jobs abroad. The engineering department at university suffers from a lack of lecturers because they can find better jobs in the private sector.”
But what about the absence of lecturers and other intellectuals from the public sphere? Why is it always the same handful of minds that express their opinion in public? Shouldn’t wage increases also be met with a greater public participation and more research by intellectuals?
“I agree with you. The university must have a greater participation in public through dissertation work and research. The reform we want at university would oblige academic staff to carry out research apart from lecturing and carrying out administrative duties. Lecturers will have to publish. These obligations would be tied to performance bonuses. And failing to do this would lead to problems with the administration,” Bencini says.
“Of course there are limitations for Maltese researchers. You cannot expect them to publish books here to a general audience, because they just won’t sell. And we must remember that some Maltese lecturers are also highly sought after abroad.”
At this stage, the two unions’ first offer was ruled out by the government, which has only come back with small percentile increases. The unions have offered a counter-package that would run up to 2012, because it does not want government’s offer to negotiate a collective agreement over a longer period running up to 2014, which the unions say is too long. “In 2010, the government’s collective agreement will close and be renegotiated. Academic staff would be once again missing the boat if their own agreement runs to 2014.”
Bencini is however very disappointed at the state of affairs at this stage. “I mean, did Fenech see what the reform text agreed upon between the university and the unions means for the country? Has he considered whether it is worth investing in this reform to make the university better, to improve its service to its students, and to further its research? Isn’t he interested in cutting down the bad work practices, or is he just thinking of how much he is going to spend by the end of the year?
“Because if you have a government that talks about achieving a centre of excellence by 2015 or trying to achieve the Lisbon targets… well, you have to invest in MCAST, the university, the Junior College. This is the future.”
Instead, Fenech proceeded to throw the teachers’ unions to the lions by publishing their demands, in a bid to chip off any sort of popular support the teachers might have. “The figures are inflated, which include the maximum performance bonuses for each employee for every single year up to 2014, costing it to €140 million over six years. He didn’t have the decency to deduct the tax that will go back to the public coffers," Bencini says,
“But even worse, Fenech based his extrapolations on our first offer, when we had already presented a second offer to him… that’s what really got our dander up. Fenech pretty much created… not class hatred, but certainly hatred towards us. You can see the comments for yourself on the media and comments we personally receive from the public. What was Fenech’s aim in publishing those figures?
“If Fenech will keep insisting on an ultimatum with us,” Bencini says about the finance ministry’s final offer, “this man is going to have big problems in this country. I mean, negotiations are about give and take… why should he be surprised that we demanded something close to our first offer, which is fair? Which union takes the worst offer? Fenech just slammed the door in our faces.”
And where is the minister of education in all this?
“I heard Dolores Cristina talk on the news that matters may soon be resolved but I don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes.”
But is she involved in the negotiations?
“We met Fenech to explain why we needed these salaries, how we arrived at them, and the reform agreement that the salary increases would underpin… he threatened that if we did not accept the deal, he would divulge our financial packages. Dolores was not present.”
Isn’t it evident that the education minister should be present in the issue, maybe to act as a bridge between the educational and bureaucratic aspects of the issue?
“I think you would have to ask her. In my opinion she should be there. Apparently they only see it as a matter of finance, rather than what such an investment will give back to the country.”
Wouldn’t he think that the country’s doctors got a better deal, a sweet pre-electoral package, even after the heftiest spend ever on the Mater Dei hospital, and perhaps one that was met with little grumbling by the public?
“Yes, but radical changes were brought to the medical sector. We see doctors as colleagues and we appreciate that they got higher salaries because of what it gives back to the public healthcare sector. But health is health… and even though it’s the people at university who churn out the doctors, the public understood that the health brain drain had to stop. And unfortunately, the public perception is that doctors are indispensible, while teachers are not. That’s a big mistake. Teachers make doctors.
"We know our image tends to suffer, worldwide. They criticise us because we are ‘out’ of school at 2pm and then we get summer holidays. Not true – we have entire classrooms’ worth of homeworks and assignments to see through, and to prepare our lessons after school is finished. And many men are not taking up the profession. More than 80% of teachers are women, and if you check out the university teaching course, there are 136 students for primary teachers and not more than 20 are men.”
And is he expecting any form of solidarity from the General Workers Union after the MUT issued a statement of support for the union during the shipyards debacle in the summer?
Bencini says the MUT had just issued an urgent press statement that talks about their concerns on local industrial relations, due to the impasse on the wage salaries. He says he hopes other unions stand together with the MUT and UMASA over the issue.
“Our issue should concern other unions. During the drydocks issue, we called for a better packet for the families depending on the shipyard jobs. Maybe the unions, such as the GWU and Union Haddiema Maghqudin, come to our side on this matter.”
The day after the MUT released their press statement, the GWU’s daily organ l-orizzont did not even carry the item.