Court hears submissions on injunction filed by health authorities to stop union directives

A judge has heard a nurses’ union representative explain that they have resorted to industrial action because they are overworked and underpaid.

Paul Pace told Mr. Justice Robert Mangion that the situation was untenable, leading the Healthcare professionals to resort to industrial action to receive their due for work of an equal value as other healthcare professionals.

Pace said the discrepancy between the wage of a nurse and that of other healthcare workers gathered under the umbrella of Allied Healthcare Professionals is of between €2,000 and €5,000 annually. 

“We were very careful when issuing directives. We did not order anything that would affect our patients but only things that have been lumped on the nursing profession. Nurses should be with their sick patients and not on the computer or on the phone,” Pace told Mr Justice Mangion.

The court was hearing submissions on the injunction filed by the health authorities to stop the nurses’ union from issuing directives that, they claim, would bring Mater Dei Hospital to a standstill. 

The injunction had been provisionally upheld, but now a final decision on whether to confirm it or otherwise will be taken by the judge in chambers. 

The Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses is in dispute with the ministry on financial issues in a sectoral agreement. Nurses are claiming that a collective agreement covering Allied Healthcare Professionals, represented by the UHM Voice of the Workers, gives hospital workers in their same grade more allowances and a take-home-pay that was substantially more than theirs. 

The union has presented the court with calculations that show the discrepancy between that paid to a healthcare worker and a nurse, both in the same salary scale and with 18 years’ experience, is of almost €3,400 while that for those with 25 years’ experience climbs to almost €4,000.   

Pace told the court that there is a shortfall of around 400 nurses in Malta’s healthcare system and this is resulting in nurses burdened with more work and forced to make sacrifices. 

The directives include nurses not coordinating transfers of patients, not chasing results including those from COVID-19 swabs and not giving handovers. The directives are not limited to Mater Dei but affect all hospitals, clinics and health centres. 

“We feel we are not appreciated. At the Intensive Therapy Unit, for example, the ratio should be one nurse per patient but there are three patients for every nurse. We were very responsible in our directives. We left out the usual ones that directly affect patients such as the washing or getting them out of bed. We stuck to things we are expected to do, and which should not be part of our duties.”

He said that the hospital’s operations were not affected by the industrial action. 

But Mater Dei chief executive Celia Falzon and Head of Nursing Carmen D’amato insisted that the directives would bring the hospital to a standstill. 

“I have never seen such action in the 36 years as a nurse,” D’Amato told the court. 

Falzon said that if communication were to stop between nurses and the other healthcare professionals, the hospital will cease to function and patients will suffer. 

The ministry's lawyers, Alex Sciberras and Paula Cauchi submitted that the directives are unlawful, disproportionate and excessive.

MUMN lawyer Chris Cilia on the other hand retorted that the nurses want an equal pay for work of an equal value and have a right to take appropriate industrial action that does not go beyond the limits set out at law.