While there is a wide-ranging consensus among the Maltese social partners about the principle of family-friendly measures for workers, employers are wary of the additional strain that such measures may put on the economic viability of companies. Indeed, while the government’s proposal to extend some family-friendly measures within the civil service to the whole public sector has been welcomed by the Union of United Workers, it has been criticised by the Malta Employers’ Association.
Government promotes family-friendly measures
The Employment and Industrial Relations Act 2002 (EIRA) (216Kb PDF) - the main piece of legislation governing employment relations in Malta - provides for family-friendly measures for workers. The act grants unpaid leave to parents to take care of a child (natural, adopted or in legal custody) for a maximum period of three months until the child reaches eight years of age. Workers are also entitled to 15 hours of paid time off work each year for urgent family reasons. Moreover, the law makes provision for employees who opt to work reduced hours to be paid a pro-rata wage to that of a full-time employee in similar employment and to be entitled to all other benefits on a pro-rata basis.
These are considered to be minimum standards and trade unions, in various bargaining rounds, have tried to go beyond these measures. The government - acting as a model employer - agreed to grant its employees more favourable family-friendly measures than those stipulated in the law. In fact, according to the last collective agreement signed between government representatives and the relevant trade unions in January 2005, public service employees can avail of a 12-month period of parental leave. Furthermore, employees entitled to parental leave can opt to work on a reduced timetable until the child reaches the age of 12 years.
Proposal to extend such measures
This issue re-emerged as a topic of debate following an announcement by the Prime Minister, Lawrence Gonzi, in the budget speech for 2007 to extend these favourable family-friendly working conditions to all employees in the public sector. Unsurprisingly, the reactions of the trade unions and the employer organisations differed. In a local newspaper article on the subject, the Secretary General of the Union of United Workers (Union Haddiema Maghqudin, UHM), Gejtu Vella, emphasised the win-win situation for achieving both organisational effectiveness and worker well-being.
Employer concerns
Conversely, the employer organisations expressed their concern that the proposed policy might lead to the extension of such measures to the private sector, and were critical of the government decision to extend the family-friendly conditions of work applying to the civil service to the entire public sector. In a press article, the President of the Malta Employers’ Association (MEA), Pierre Fava, stated that this is ‘another instance where provisions in the collective agreement have been bypassed; and any plans to extend such measures to the private sector will be a mistake’. The employer organisations even refused to attend a meeting organised by UHM to discuss the matter.
The disquiet among employers was not restricted to the private sector. The public sector is not made up of a homogenous group of entities; indeed, what constitutes the public sector is not very clear. For example, the directors of the Bank of Valletta, in which the government has a majority shareholding, do not consider the bank to be part of the public sector. Employees in this bank can only work on reduced hours until their child is four years old. The same conditions on reduced working hours apply to employees of the Central Bank of Malta. The directors of this bank, like those of the Bank of Valletta, contend that their institution is autonomous and, therefore, they are not bound to conform to the government rule in this instance.
In the latter case, the Union of Employees at the Central Bank (Union Haddiema Bank Centrali) - which is the recognised trade union representing the bank’s employees in collective bargaining - complained about the policy adopted by the bank administration. The union sent a petition, signed by a large number of employees, to the Minister for the Family and Social Solidarity, Dolores Cristina, asking her to intervene to enable the employees at the Central Bank of Malta to benefit from the same favourable family-friendly working conditions granted to employees in the civil service. As of February 2007, there have been no further developments in this regard.
Commentary
A wide-ranging consensus prevails about the principle of family-friendly measures for workers. The government has shown its commitment to this ideal by granting favourable family-friendly conditions to its employees and by its attempts to extend this practice to other areas of work. The party in opposition, the Malta Labour Party (Partit Laburista, MLP), has shown equal commitment, referring to family-friendly measures in its statements in relation to the world of work; the party leader, Alfred Sant, even stated that these measures would be high on the Labour government agenda.
For their part, the trade unions have strived to introduce the most favourable family-friendly measures in collective agreements. Meanwhile, the employer organisations have also stated that, in principle, they are not against these measures as long as they do not incur additional costs on employers that would endanger the economic viability of their companies.
Unfortunately, in spite of this wide consensus, measures aimed at helping workers achieve a better work-life balance currently can only be applied to a small section of workers. The debate on this issue has highlighted the gap that exists in industrial relations between rhetoric and reality.
Saviour Rizzo, Centre for Labour Studies, University of Malta