Civil service gets €17 million, eight-year collective agreement

The government has signed a collective agreement for civil servants that covers a total eight-year period.

30,000 civil servants will benefit from the agreement, the fifth since 1996, set to cost €17 million in the first year and going up to €20.5 million by 2024.

Workers will benefit from an increase in salaries, including qualification allowances and changes to shift allowances.

For the first time, the principle of recognition will be introduced to resolve disputes that arise over workers’ representation.

“This government wants to establish itself as a model employer,” Prime Minister Joseph Muscat told social partners and permanent secretaries present for the signing of the agreement. “This agreement is also about sending a message about the people’s quality of life and improvement in their rights.”

Muscat said a budget surplus was important but it would mean nothing if workers failed to benefit from a wealthy economy, saying the government wanted less bureaucracy and a crackdown on precarious work.

“If workers’ conditions don’t inspire confidence, we will never have an efficient public service which is of quality,” he said.

He conceded that key performance indicators might irk workers, but that this would be a way of ensure that taxpayers get “a return on their investment”.

Muscat said the agreement was the biggest one ever signed in the public service. The agreement guarantees an increase in the salaries of public administration workers, with the increase reaching €17 million in the first year, going up to €20.5 million by the end of the agreement.

Workers who continue to work past their retirement age won’t lose their right to pre-retirement leave.

Signatories to the agreement include the General Workers Union, the Malta Chamber of Psychologists, Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses, the Malta Union of Teachers, the Medical Association of Malta, Union Haddiema Maghqudin and the Union of Engineers and Architects.

Shortly after it was signed, the Nationalist Party said that it would respect the collective agreement, as well as work to address the “big injustices that exist among civil servants.”

“Nationalist Party leader Simon Busuttil has already committed himself to implement the principle of equal pay for equal work, and to address the big injustices that exist among workers. The inequality that has hit workers under this administration is unprecedented,” the party said in a statement.