News 07/07/2002

Collective agreement at Union Press still in the balance

While the General Workers’ Union is at loggerheads with the Water Services Corporation over the unsigned collective agreement for WSC employees, the union has still not come to terms with its own employees at the Union Press.

The new collective agreement for Union Press workers is still in the balance with no agreement yet reached between the workers’ committee, UPEC, and the management.

Union Press workers namely, journalists, printers, clerks and jobbers, who form the printing arm of the General Workers’ Union are still in the dark about their wage increases.

A Lm3-a-week pay increase had been on UPEC’s agenda since the beginning of the talks but the management still refuses to budge from its Lm2-a-week offer. The management’s offer is a far cry from the Lm6-a-week rise it is asking for in the WSC collective agreement.

Top officials at the GWU are trying to sell the idea that everyone needs to pull the rope together as the newspapers are not doing very well with circulation figures not as healthy as they used to be up to a few months ago. Insiders told

MaltaToday that even the weekly television magazine L-Antenna is passing through a bad patch owing to intense competition by rival magazine Il-Gwida.

Among the new conditions proposed by top officials for the revised collective agreement is the abolition of summer half days for those who work as day workers. These include the advertising department, features department and other workers which are on clerical duties. Another measure proposed by the management is for the numerous sections of the Union Press to start working on shift to reduce overtime expenses. One of the proposals is working four days a week but on a day of 10 hours instead of the usual eight. The management wants a total ban on overtime.

Most of the workers are contesting this decision as they believe that this goes against what the GWU preaches.

The wages at the Union Press have not been revised for several years because a wage freeze on the collective agreement was imposed. The last decent wage increase that they received was in the Anglu Fenech era. After that under Secretary General Jackie Calamatta, the workers received no pay increases at all.