Part Timer Benefits Amendment

I would suppose that the amendment that will affect Maltese employers the most would be the amendments to the Part Time Regulations of 2002. Effectively, the government was forced to eliminate the 20-hour threshold for part timer benefits and bonus payments, as these run counter to the principle that part timers should not be treated less favourably as found in the parent European Directive.

The legal notice issued on the 18th of May of this year (LN 140), which came into force on the 1st of July 2007  eliminated the 20 hour threshold and left only the payment of social security contributions as the sole test for the trigger of pro rata benefits for the part timer under our law. In other words, prior to this amendment, an employee would be entitled to benefits if he/she would be working for 20 hours or more as an average  AND would be paying the social security contributions via his/her employer. Now, the only test would be if the employee is paying the social security contributions via his/her employer and no minimum amount of hours is necessary.

The report of the Times of Malta , did in fact say that those persons who work as part timers for 8 hours a week would be entitled to pro rata benefits.  This is not exactly the case as it is only those part timers who pay social security contributions via their employer who qualify for pro rata benefits.  As Andrew Borg Cardona put it in his letter to the Times, “The threshold of eight hours to which your report refers does not exist in the law: one must surmise that this figure was referred to because it is this number of hours of employment per week that triggers off the obligation to pay Social Security contributions.”

Interestingly, the time for a part timer to lodge a complaint in the Industrial Tribunal claiming a breach of the regulations was also extended from 3 months to 4 in order to be in line with other local regulations.