[WATCH] UPE issues directives after citing injustice towards educators

The Union of Professional Educators has issued a set of directives to its members, after expressing concern over what it is calling "abusive conduct" by the education department.

UPE executive head Graham Sansone said there were three issues the education department was failing to address.

Sansone said educators were being assigned transport duty and not being paid adequately for their overtime.

According to the union, teachers and LSEs are being exploited by being paid one hour less than they have worked each day. "Even though these educators are working one and a half hours of transport supervision before and after school hours, which sums up to three hours of overtime a day, the ministry is paying them for just two hours," Sansone said.

He added that the department is depriving these educators of twenty hours of work at overtime rate.

The second issue cited by the union was a result of the sectoral agreement, which according to the UPE has given rise to an "incredible injustice".

The UPE said those who reached the grade of LSE2 prior to the sectoral agreement between the Malta Union of Teachers (MUT) and the department of education, are getting paid less than those who did after.

"It pains us to see such nonsensical behaviour, which is unheard of anywhere," Sansone said.

The last concern issued by the union was that of lack of information being provided by the education department to educators.

"For educators to be kept in the dark as to ratios of required educators per student... is unacceptable," the union stated.

Furthermore, according to the UPE, when it had tried to request a copy of this document, the directors of the education department had tried to mislead the union by saying that it was an internal document.

The directives, which come into action on Friday will ask of union members not to attend or carry out work on Individual Education Programmes, not to work on adaptations and not to carry out and document observations in schools.

If the conditions are not met, more directives will be issued on Monday.

The directives will be lifted once the issues are resolved, Sansone said.