8 - 14 June 2000

Court stops work to rule by pilots' association

by Noel Grima

A prohibitory injunction plea was yesterday upheld by the civil court to stop a work to rule by the Air Malta pilots association, Airline Pilots' Association Malta. The pilots had begun a work to rule in the morning. They targeted the roster guidelines of the company, which are never really put in practice, the piloits claimed, but which the pilots began enforcing yesterday morning

Usually they accept to work on their off days and to fit in extra flights. As from yesterday morning, they began obeying strictly the company's own rules for roster guidelines.

Consequently, Air Malta requested the Civil Court to open outside hours yesterday and asked the court to issue a warrant of prohibitory injunction restraining the pilots' association from continuing to take industrial action in connection with the revision of the pilots' collective agreement.

The company also issued a judicial protest calling on the union to refrain from further action and holding it responsible for damages.

The applications were signed by Dr Andrew Borg Cardona on behalf of the company. The Civil Court, Judge David Scicluna presiding, issued the prohibitory injunction and gave the union 24 hours to reply to the company's injunction and protest.

Speaking to The Malta Business Weeekly early in the evening, ALPA president Eric Cordina said that the injunction had not yet reached him or the union's secretary.

Mr Cordina deplored what he called the company's management "shameful attitude" towards its Maltese pilots. He claimed the airline had procrastinated for 14 months over the collective agreement and that every time the two sides came close to an agreement, the company seemed to insert a new condition or to require something extra from the pilots.

He claimed that there is what he called a blatant discrimination between the salaries received by the Maltese captains and those received by foreigners. Maltese pilots with 25 years' experience, he said, do not get as much salary as a foreign pilot in his first year in Malta.

He also claimed that the pilots fly around double the average flight times of other pilots, almost to the legal limits. They fly under 900 hours flying time a year compared to an average 500-600.

There is a worldwide shortage pf pilots and every airline is trying hard to keep its pilots, he said. Four Maltese pilots have resigned in the past six months and they are already getting more than double what they would get if the union's requests are fully met by the airline, Mr Cordina said.

In its protest, Air Malta claimed that up to Tuesday evening the two sides were engaged in negotiations for the revision of the collective agreement but the union unilaterally stopped all discussions and did not propose any alternatives to the company.

The company also claimed that the union declared an industrial dispute while it was still negotiating and that the union issued a declaration to the media without informing the airline.

The airline claimed that the industrial action taken yesterday morning is in breach of the collective agreement because it does not give any notice to the company and thus the company cannot take remedial action.

The company claimed that throughout the negotiations it had shown goodwill to better the pilots' packages, within the context of sectional and national obligations of the airline.

But the union, Air Malta claimed, always insisted its requests had to be met. Its intransigence and inflexibility, which go against the spirit of negotiations, became a setback for the negotiations.

The company claimed that the union was showing irresponsibility as the industrial action will have a negative and substantial impact on the airline's operations, on the tourism sector.

The two sides, said the airline, had agreed that no action would be taken by either side unless the two sides had exhausted all possible means of mediation.

In a separate statement, Air Malta expressed its surprise and disappointment at the way in which the union had, without prior notice, decided unilaterally and without any prior indication to the company, to register and make public an industrial dispute even while discussions were still taking place.

ALPA's actions would unequivocally reveal instead, said the airline, that instead of directing their endeavours to reach a fair and equitable solution to both parties, they resorted to a strategy which is not in line with acceptable machinery of industrial relations and not according to the resolution of disputes as stipulated in the collective agreements.

The company said it did more than its utmost to reach an acceptable solution to both sides, especially when it had to consider the state of affairs in the aviation industry worldwide - which is facing ferocious competition, lowering of yields and drastic increase in costs.

In the company's opinion, the pilots' union has throughout the negotiations maintained a rigid, inflexible, uncompromising, take-it-or-leave-it attitude with exorbitant claims which the company had no option but to reject.