Nurses insist on right for industrial action to press for better pay
The Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses on Wednesday defended in court a decision to order industrial action, with union chief Paul Pace insisting that nurses should be paid at the same rates as other healthcare professionals.
The dispute was taken to court after a judge last week temporarily upheld a Health Ministry request to ban the action because of its impact on the health service.
Pace said the discrepancy between the wage of a nurse and that of other healthcare workers was between €2,000 and €5,000 annually.
“We were very careful when issuing the directives. We did not order anything that would affect patients but only things that have been lumped on the nursing profession. Nurses should be with sick patients and not on a computer or on the phone,” Pace told Mr Justice Robert Mangion.
The union's directives include nurses not coordinating transfers of patients, not chasing results including those from COVID-19 swabs and not giving handovers. The directives would have affected all state hospitals, clinics and health centres.
The MUMN is arguing that a collective agreement covering Allied Healthcare Professionals, represented by the UHM Voice of the Workers, gave hospital...