State-owned ho­tel Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad has sig­nalled its in­ten­tion to tem­porar­i­ly lay-off staff and pos­si­bly even con­sid­er per­ma­nent job cuts in the fu­ture.

In a let­ter to “Dear Val­ued Hy­att Trinidad Col­leagues” on Fri­day, the ho­tel’s gen­er­al man­ag­er Richard West­ell told of the “dif­fi­cult de­ci­sions” the com­pa­ny would have to take as a re­sult of the fi­nan­cial im­pact of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“In re­sponse to the un­prece­dent­ed de­cline in trav­el de­mand we have seen across the globe, we have had to take sig­nif­i­cant ac­tions that have deeply im­pact­ed our op­er­a­tions and col­leagues at Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad,” the let­ter stat­ed.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, as a re­sult, we made the ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult de­ci­sion to im­ple­ment tem­po­rary lay-offs across our ho­tel work­force for a por­tion of our col­leagues. While we have made sig­nif­i­cant cost-sav­ing mea­sures as an ef­fort to avoid this sce­nario, ul­ti­mate­ly, these mea­sures were nec­es­sary to se­cure the ho­tel’s long-term vi­a­bil­i­ty,” it stat­ed.

“While our hope re­mains that all of the fur­loughs will be tem­po­rary, we must pre­pare for longer-term em­ploy­ment loss­es,” the let­ter stat­ed.

The let­ter from West­ell stat­ed that Hy­att will con­tin­ue to staff the ho­tel based on “an­tic­i­pat­ed oc­cu­pan­cy lev­els.”

Af­fect­ed em­ploy­ees are ex­pect­ed to re­ceive their let­ters about the job sta­tus­es to­day.

While there is no ma­jor­i­ty trade union rep­re­sent­ing em­ploy­ees at the Hy­att, Ger­ry Kan­galee of the Na­tion­al Work­ers’ Union said the union would be will­ing to help the af­fect­ed work­ers.

Kan­galee said West­ell’s let­ter was a “clear warn­ing to the work­ers that the man­age­ment is not on­ly im­ple­ment­ing tem­po­rary lay-offs but con­tem­plat­ing re­trench­ing work­ers.”

Kan­galee said ac­cord­ing to the In­dus­tri­al Court “an em­ploy­ee may be said to be laid off when he is not of­fered work for a tem­po­rary pe­ri­od.”

He said the pe­ri­od of the lay-off must be stat­ed in a let­ter to the em­ploy­ee who is be­ing laid off and that it is il­le­gal for it to be for an in­def­i­nite time-frame.

Kan­galee ad­vised af­fect­ed work­ers to en­sure they get a let­ter from the ho­tel.

In­ter­na­tion­al­ly Hy­att ho­tels have been lay­ing off staff be­cause of the pan­dem­ic.

In May Hy­att Ho­tels Corp HN an­nounced it would lay off 1,300 peo­ple glob­al­ly.

Hy­att said it had al­so cut pay for se­nior man­age­ment, board mem­bers and all em­ploy­ees in cor­po­rate of­fices as part of a re­struc­tur­ing, adding that the staff who were be­ing laid off would be el­i­gi­ble for sev­er­ance pay.