TMID Editorial: More trouble brewing at MCAST
After an academic year characterised by industrial directives and protests by educators over working conditions, a situation which eventually severely impacted students because their examination results were not issued until the middle of July, it ap
After an academic year characterised by industrial directives and protests by educators over working conditions, a situation which eventually severely impacted students because their examination results were not issued until the middle of July, it appears that there is more trouble brewing at MCAST.
On what was meant to be the first day of the scholastic year at MCAST, the Malta Union of Teachers called a protest outside the MCAST administration building Paola as negotiations on their collective agreement drag on.
For the past two years and nine months, MUT said it was involved in negotiations of a new collective agreement with MCAST. This collective agreement involves eight grades and includes Lecturing grades, Student Support Services grades, Student Mentors, Directors, Deputy Directors, Technicians grades, Learning Support Educators and Senior Research Officers.
An opening ceremony to commemorate the start of the academic year was cancelled by the school after the protest was announced. The MUT further lambasted that new leadership of MCAST, saying that the new principal had been at the school for 20 years and had failed to negotiate with the MUT or even attend any negotiation meetings with the union and government.
"For the principal, this is an easy solution, have someone else who has never even stepped foot in MCAST make the decision. For us, this is not a solution," Bonnici said, adding that if the union did not want arbitration, the Principal "threatened" MUT with legal action.
"This academic year will not be a normal one, as there is an expired collective agreement, and workers and educators are being affected," Bonnici said.
This is an increasingly serious situation because it appears that while educators fight - quite rightly so - for their own rights, it will again be students who suffer many of the consequences through no fault of their own.
The student body is being treated as collateral damage in this saga. Last year, many students were left without examination results right till the middle of July - leaving them unable to make any plans or even know whether they have graduated from their course or not.
This year, while the academic year has only just begun, it appears that they can expect to face more consequences as a result of a process which - for some reason - has been allowed to drag on for almost three years.
Educators are right to be infuriated by the current situation. One would have hoped that, even without considering the fact that the previous collective expired has long since expired, after the events at the end of the last scholastic year there would have been the good will to get an agreement over the line, or at least to register some progress.
That doesn't appear to have been the case, and while educators continue to face an unjust situation by being remunerated on the basis of an agreement which has expired three years ago, students also have a year of being an innocent punching bag for any consequences that may come from there being no new agreement in place.
If that's not a discouraging feeling to have coming into a scholastic year, then we don't know what is.
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