Zammit & Associates - Advocates, provides its clients with an array of employment-related solutions including contracts of service, dismissals, redundancies, transfers of employees between undertakings, equal treatment on the workplace and the implementation of appropriate systems and procedures for clients’ human resources.
Employment law overview: Malta
The right of all citizens to work and the state’s role in promoting the conditions to make this right effective is enshrined in Malta’s 1974 Republican Constitution which upholds the basic principles of workers’ rights, including inter alia the maximum number of daily working hours, a weekly rest day, holidays without pay, the establishment of a minimum working age, gender equality, professional and vocational training for workers, contributory social insurance and the provision of the means of subsistence for those unable to work.
Sources of Labour Law
The hierarchy of legal sources of Maltese labour law can be generally broken down as follows:
- Primary Legislation - The most notable of these primary legislative sources include the Constitution of Malta, the Employment and Industrial Relations Act (EIRA), the Employment Commission Act, the Employment and Training Services Act and EU Regulations and Directives which apply in virtue of the doctrine of direct effect
- Secondary Legislation - Regulations made under the EIRA, the majority of which serve to implement EU regulations and directives, fleshing out the basic legal framework provided by the EIRA. These include Wage Regulation Orders which represent administrative regulations which regulate certain conditions of employment for specific sectors. At present, there are 31 different WROs in force. The conditions specified in these Orders include inter alia maximum hours of work, minimum wages, overtime rates, sick leave and special leave.
- Public Service Management Code - Members of the public service have their conditions of employment regulated by means of the Public Service Management Code or “PSMC” which was introduced in 2002 to replace the EstaCode. The PSMC brings together all the standing regulations, circulars, policies on HR Management, in the fields of Employee Relations and Resourcing in the Public Service. This code falls within the competence of the Management and Personnel Office (the former Establishments Division) within the Office of the Prime Minister.
- Collective agreements - these are enterprise-specific agreements which regulate the conditions of employment of around a th rd of the total gainful employment in the private sector.
- Custom and practice - These serve as a source of law in circumstances where the law is silent.
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