Malta’s Independent Restaurant Workers Feel Discriminated By COVID-19 Wage Supplement Scheme
Independent restaurant workers feel “discriminated” by the way hotel restaurant workers are receiving €200 more than them every month through the government’s COVID-19 wage supplement scheme.
Through the wage supplement, restaurant workers are currently receiving €600 a month, whilst hotel restaurant workers receive €800 a month.
Malta’s Association of Catering Establishments (ACE) said that through this, the government is giving hotel restaurants an “unfair advantage” over independent restaurants, leading to workers appertaining to latter establishments feeling “discriminated”.
Only yesterday, the ACE published a survey showing that despite Malta’s decision to open its ports, local restaurants are still undergoing severe economical hardships. A worrying 12.5% of the survey respondents said that their restaurants were completely empty during peak lunch hours.
A spokesperson for ACE expressed concerns over the amount of income that restaurants can generate through Maltese customers.
“We have reached the maximum income we can get from Maltese people – and that’s only 60% of what we usually get in a normal year,” he said. “If tourist numbers don’t increase, more restaurant workers will have to be laid off.”
When questioned about this, Tony Zahra, the president of the Malta Hotel and Restaurants Association (MHRA) said that ultimately, this was not the association’s decision to make.
“When we were in talks about the supplement, no differentiation was made between hotel restaurants and independent restaurants,” Zahra said.
“We decided to subsidise hotel workers a certain amount of money, and restaurant workers a different amount of money.”
Having said that, hotel restaurant workers are classified as ‘hotel workers’ rather than ‘restaurant workers’ under the wage supplement scheme, thus permitting them to benefit from a higher monthly allowance.
Whilst saying that this issue will be brought up during negotiations next September, Zahra justified this decision by saying that restaurants were given rent and utility subsidies on top of their wage supplement.