Announcements

UMASA calls upon academic staff at University and Junior College to boycott opening ceremony of the 2008/9 academic year.
Rally for all UMASA members Tuesday 30th September at 9am at Gateway Hall E, University campus.
UMASA to give negotiation details and announce actions during rally.
The unions financial claims are based on the following important factors:
1. The fact that the academic staff are already grossly underpaid under the present conditions. Over the past 20 years, the academic staff salaries have fallen consistently further behind when compared to the national GDP/capita, while real productivity has increased at least threefold (e.g. staff:student ratio has fallen from 1:9 in 1986 to about 1:25 today, while the number of teaching programmes, the research output, and amount of procured external funds has grown by several orders of magnitude).
2. The fact that, over and above (1) above, the new collective agreement will further improve productivity, efficiency, accountability, and profitability at the University.
3. The fact that all of the UOM performance output is measured against an international yardstick (skills acquired by our graduates, research funding obtained, publications, criteria for promotion, etc.). Thus, in order to enable us to perform and compete in the international arena, the working conditions here should be similar to those of overseas universities. The unions have in fact referred to a number of sources of international remuneration statistics for academics when making our financial claims. In particular, we have looked at the university remuneration in our fellow new EU Mediterranean island state, Cyprus, and have even corrected these (downwards) to reflect the lower cost of living and GDP/capita in Malta.
4. The fact that a very comparable sector of the workforce in Malta has very recently set a very clear, and perfectly justified, LOCAL benchmark for very highly qualified personnel in public service.
UMASA and MUT would like to thank the academic staff at the University and at the Junior college for the massive support given during the rally held on 30th September 2008.
- During the rally, the union officials gave details on the timeline of events that led to the present situation, and made a clear justification for the salaries that are being requested by the unions.
- The unions also disclosed some of the basic salary figures being offered by the Government, for the period 2009 to 2014. These figures are far below the amounts expected by, and due to, the academic staff. The unions emphasized that although a performance bonus was also being offered, there was no guarantee that this bonus would be obtained by all deserving academic staff members. The academic supplements being offered by the Government for some grades of academic staff are also inadequate and are not sufficient to compensate for the poor salaries on offer.
- If one were to add up the basic salary, and other supplementary remuneration being offered by the Government, these are incredibly poor for the years 2008 to 2010, and are still far below expectations for the subsequent years.
- Furthermore, the unions cannot accept to sign a collective agreement that fixes salaries all the way to 2014.
UMASA appeals to all University Academic staff to observe the directive for 1st October in its entirety, and to be on the look out for further directives that may be announced by the unions.
If there are any queries or difficulties please contact the union officials on 7998-6272 (UMASA) or 9948-8368 (MUT).
UMASA would appreciate any offers from volunteers among the academic staff to help during this industrial action.