An­na-Lisa Paul

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Air­line Pi­lots’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTAL­PA) says it is pre­pared to save the jobs of pi­lots, even if a fur­ther cut in salaries may be nec­es­sary.

Last week, a let­ter sent to the as­so­ci­a­tion by Caribbean Air­lines’ (CAL) vice-pres­i­dent of Hu­man Re­sources, Roger Berke­ley, re­vealed that the com­pa­ny, as part of its re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise, aims to send home be­tween 95 and 115 pi­lots out of the 252 cur­rent­ly em­ployed.

The let­ter not­ed that the fi­nal num­ber has not yet been de­ter­mined but a re­duc­tion of the fleet would po­ten­tial­ly lead to a re­duc­tion in the pi­lot body, giv­en that the com­pa­ny had suf­fered a $172 mil­lion loss in the first quar­ter of 2021.

Yes­ter­day, TTAL­PA in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions con­sul­tant, Zatopek So­lu­tions Inc, told Guardian Me­dia it has re­quest­ed cer­tain fi­nan­cial in­for­ma­tion from the com­pa­ny to as­sess whether re­trench­ing work­ers is, in fact, nec­es­sary and to pro­vide its own sug­ges­tions for cost-sav­ings.

“We have been ask­ing them for the specifics about their fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion since we start­ed all the dis­cus­sions con­cern­ing the pan­dem­ic and the im­pact it has had on their op­er­a­tions,” Zatopek’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Ger­ry Pinard said.

Pinard said they are yet to re­ceive a re­sponse from the com­pa­ny.

“We don’t know what their plans are,” he lament­ed.

“First thing we want to know, be­cause again, if it is on the premise that fre­quen­cy of flights is go­ing to get back up to pre-COVID lev­els with­in two years, then it does not ap­pear to be mak­ing much sense and we are go­ing on a huge re­duc­tion in terms of the pi­lots’ work­force at this stage.”

He added, “Es­pe­cial­ly if it’s go­ing to cost you $110 mil­lion to pay off sev­er­ance and that sort of thing, why would you do that and in two years’ time you will have to ramp back up and look for pi­lots again.”

He em­pha­sised that the main fo­cus is to en­sure, if at all pos­si­ble, the as­so­ci­a­tion finds a way to make sure no pi­lots lose their jobs.

Asked whether pi­lots will con­sid­er tak­ing a pay cut, he said, “We have done that in the past and we would be pre­pared to do what­ev­er is nec­es­sary with­in rea­son to make sure that we pre­serve jobs.”

Pinard added, “Over the last eight or nine months, they agreed to 57 per cent salary sac­ri­fices to as­sist CAL in re­duc­ing ex­pen­di­ture and sur­viv­ing this sit­u­a­tion. It now ap­pears a lot of that have been done in vain.”

The com­pa­ny has said it may be re­trench­ing 25 per cent of staff across its lo­cal, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al net­works, amount­ing to 450 work­ers.

TTAL­PA was due to meet with CAL of­fi­cials last Fri­day. How­ev­er, Pinard said due to “sched­ul­ing is­sues” by the com­pa­ny, the meet­ing was can­celled. He said they ex­pect the meet­ing will take place lat­er this week.

Guardian Me­dia asked CAL’s Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er, Dionne Ligoure, for an up­date on its meet­ing with TTAL­PA.

Ligoure said, “The process of con­sul­ta­tion is on­go­ing so there is no fur­ther up­date at this time.”