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Sunday, March 16, 2025

Pilots run new digital billboard ad calling on CAL to settle wage talks

by

Otto Carrington
15 days ago
20250301
The ad calling on CAL to settle pilots’ wages on a digital billboard in Port-of-Spain.

The ad calling on CAL to settle pilots’ wages on a digital billboard in Port-of-Spain.

A dig­i­tal bill­board in Port-of-Spain is now fea­tur­ing an ad urg­ing Caribbean Air­lines Lim­it­ed (CAL) to re­solve out­stand­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions with its pi­lots.

This fol­lows a sim­i­lar bill­board dis­played at BWIA Boule­vard, Pi­ar­co, as pres­sure con­tin­ues to mount on the air­line amid on­go­ing dis­cus­sions with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Air­line Pi­lots’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTAL­PA).

This is the sec­ond bill­board call­ing on CAL to ac­cept the four per cent wage in­crease ap­proved by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert in Oc­to­ber of last year.

Fol­low­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence held by TTAL­PA on Thurs­day, CAL is­sued a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day reaf­firm­ing its com­mit­ment to fair and trans­par­ent ne­go­ti­a­tions with the pi­lots’ as­so­ci­a­tion.

CAL’s head of Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Dionne Ligoure, told Guardian Me­dia, “Caribbean Air­lines con­tin­ues to seek a fair and eq­ui­table res­o­lu­tion to the on­go­ing good-faith ne­go­ti­a­tions with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Air­line Pi­lots As­so­ci­a­tion over the terms and con­di­tions of em­ploy­ment for the pi­lots. These salary ne­go­ti­a­tions re­late to ad­di­tion­al in­creas­es for pi­lots for the pe­ri­od 2015 to 2023.”

In De­cem­ber 2024, Caribbean Air­lines and the union suc­cess­ful­ly con­clud­ed ne­go­ti­a­tions on the col­lec­tive agree­ment for the pe­ri­od 2015 to 2020.

As a re­sult, she said the air­line has made pay­ments to the pi­lots to­talling ap­prox­i­mate­ly $14 mil­lion, based on an agreed ad­di­tion­al salary in­crease of four per cent.

She added, “This is in ad­di­tion to the 14.5 per cent av­er­age cu­mu­la­tive in­crease to salaries that pi­lots would have al­ready re­ceived dur­ing that pe­ri­od. With this as­pect of the ne­go­ti­a­tions con­clud­ed the com­pa­ny is quite con­fi­dent that an agree­ment can be reached over ad­di­tion­al in­creas­es for the pe­ri­od 2020 to 2023, and we will con­tin­ue the ne­go­ti­a­tions with the union.”

She con­tin­ued, “The union has pro­vid­ed a pro­pos­al, and that is cur­rent­ly be­ing re­viewed. We tru­ly ac­knowl­edge the con­tri­bu­tion of all Caribbean Air­lines em­ploy­ees, in­clud­ing our ded­i­cat­ed team of pi­lots, and the com­pa­ny is stead­fast in main­tain­ing pos­i­tive and re­spect­ful in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions.”

TTAL­PA is ex­pect­ed to is­sue a state­ment on the mat­ter soon.

The re­la­tion­ship be­tween CAL and its pi­lots has been any­thing but smooth over the years, with on­go­ing dis­putes over wages, work­ing con­di­tions and con­tract ne­go­ti­a­tions cre­at­ing ten­sion be­tween the par­ties.

Back in 2020, pi­lots staged protests over salary re­duc­tions and job se­cu­ri­ty dur­ing the height of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

The air­line faced se­vere fi­nan­cial loss­es and im­ple­ment­ed salary cuts, fur­loughs, and op­er­a­tional changes that pi­lots ar­gued placed an un­fair bur­den on them.

In De­cem­ber 2024, af­ter years of stalled ne­go­ti­a­tions, CAL and TTAL­PA fi­nal­ly reached an agree­ment on the 2015–2020 col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing pe­ri­od, which they say has not yet been ho­n­oured af­ter Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert asked in Oc­to­ber for the mat­ter to be set­tled.


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