Updated | University unions' dispute resolved

Government and academic unions have reached an understanding over the new collective agreement- Student council petition urged academics' union and government to move forward with their financial negotiations as quickly as possible.

The Government, the MUT and the UMASA have reached an understanding over the industrial action that the two unions had issued as a  result of their disagreement with the financial package that the Government had proposed in the new collective agreement. Details of this new understanding are not yet known.

Earlier today, the leader of the Nationalist Party, Simon Busuttil, had added his name to an online petition issued by the University Students’ Council (KSU). In a statement, Busuttil said that students should “never be used as a political ball, especially at such a sensitive time as now when they’re waiting anxiously to see whether the sacrifices they had made throughout the past academic year will bear them fruit”.

Busuttil also appealed directly to the Government to always keep the students’ interests before everything else.

The petition is addressed to Prime Minister Joseph Muscat. Minister for Education and Employment Evarist Bartolo, the University of Malta Academic Staff Association (UMASA), and the Malta Union of Teachers (MUT) and urges them to move forward with their financial negotiations as quickly as possible.

In a joint press release issued on the 4 July, UMASA and MUT said that the financial proposal that the Univeristy and the Government had offered them was “less than the increases given to other public entities” and “totally unacceptable”. They instituted industrial action in both the University of Malta (Uom) and the Junior College (JC).

As part of the directives, the Unions said that “all academics at the UoM are to withhold all non-final year Undergraduate results at UoM and JC”

 According to a poll carried out by the student media organisation Insite on the 15 July, 84% of University students are yet to receive any second semester results.