Ministers break silence on nurses’ dispute: ‘Take home pay will increase by €6,000’

Nurses and midwives could expect a yearly increase in their take home pay of €6,000 by the end of the sectoral agreement proposed by the government. 

Ministers Chris Fearne and Jo Etienne Abela, writing in MaltaToday, say the government proposals place nurses “amongst the top-two tiers” for total take home pay. 

This is the first time the ministers responsible for health and the elderly respectively have spoken publicly about details of government’s proposals rejected by the nurses’ union. 

The Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses called off industrial action last Thursday and will be holding an extraordinary general meeting for its members on Tuesday to decide the way forward. 

The union rejected government’s latest offer, made during a meeting on 6 April. The union subsequently refused to attend a conciliatory meeting called by the Health Ministry, calling it “useless”. 

However, the MUMN will on Tuesday ask its members to vote on the government proposals it has already rejected. Nurses will also decide what industrial action they will take if they refuse the government’s offer. 

The MUMN has said its demands represent an increase of around €75 million in the nurses’ wage bill, rejecting an estimate of around €130 million suggested to MaltaToday by government sources a couple of weeks ago. 

Fearne and Abela do not quantify what government’s pay increases will cost but insist that they are more than double the increase nurses got in the 2018 sectoral agreement. 

They insist the government’s offer to the MUMN was “publicly misrepresented, distorted and maligned at the cost of the truth”. 

They also say that industrial action taken by the union led to “predictably dangerous consequences” on the health of patients. 

Describing the current impasse as a “crossroads” they insist now is the time to put their cards on the table and present “the facts”. 

The ministers say that government is proposing that all hours worked by nurses in excess of 40 hours per week “will no longer be compensated at a flat rate but on an hourly rate multiplied by 1.5”. 

This alone, they argue, will lead to a “very significant” increase in earnings for all nurses who work overtime hours but “especially to those who work 46 and 2/3 hour shifts”. 

Nurses and midwives have an extended work week of 46.6 hours and the union wants the additional hours to be compensated at overtime rates and taxed at a flat 10%. 

Among other details, the ministers also say that government’s proposal also includes an increase in nursing premiums across the board. “In addition, as from 2025 more nurses will start benefitting from a higher nursing premium as the categories for eligibility are lowered from the nurses who have 35 years of service to those who have 25 years of service,” they say. 

Fearne and Abela insist the government is putting its money where its mouth is. “Between 2018 and 2022 the Sectoral Agreement for Nurses and Midwives was considered to be a very good one, including hefty increases. Our proposals today are offering increases which are more than double those we gave in 2018.” 

Pledging to continue showing goodwill till the end, the ministers, however, insist that “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed”.