PN demands finance minister fulfill agreement with Air Malta employees

The Nationalist Party has called on the government to stick to its agreement with Air Malta employees, condemning the behaviour of Finance Minister Clyde Caruana, who is reneging on the deal signed with close to 600 employees in the run-up to the general elections.

Addressing a press conference following revelations by The Shift that Clyde Caruana was threatening Air Malta employees with shutting down the airline if they didn’t accept his new terms, PN MP Jerome Caruana Cilia said the government should have done its homework and it was unacceptable to shift the goalposts now.

The Shift revealed the government’s attempts to renege on the deal signed with Air Malta employees before the general elections in March, up to a meeting called on Tuesday in which the finance minister threatened to shut down the airline if the employees would not accept the government withdrawing from an agreement that drew hundreds of votes to the Labour Party in the last general elections through an agreement that is now worthless.

Following an agreement with the General Workers Union earlier this year, Minister Caruana launched a Voluntary Transfer Employment Scheme (VETS) guaranteeing a lifetime government job to employees who chose to end their employment with the ailing national airline.

Clyde Caruana now wants to rescind the agreement, negotiating with the GWU to give the employees a golden handshake instead of a job for life with the government. The GWU is participating in negotiations, but it has not made its position public.

PN MP Jerome Caruana Cilia said that while the government had utterly mismanaged Air Malta in the past years, it was unacceptable that the employees now have to carry the burden of the administration’s mistakes. He made the point that scandals reported show that while the government had the money to serve its cronies, it was not respecting its deal with Air Malta employees.

MP Ian Castillo, the PN’s spokesman for employment, said it was clear that the 577 Air Malta employees who took up the scheme have been double-crossed by the government.

He challenged the government to state the reasons behind the sudden change of mind. He asked why it wanted to change the terms of the agreement, who had agreed on the terms offered before the elections, why the employees were lied to and how certain people close to Labour were being selected to get government jobs at the detriment of all the other employees.