KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Air­line Pi­lots’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTAL­PA) yes­ter­day fi­nal­ly signed off on a new four per cent pay hike agree­ment with Caribbean Air­lines (CAL).

It came af­ter more than a year of ne­go­ti­at­ing for the col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing pe­ri­od 2015 to 2020. The for­mer agree­ment ex­pired in 2015. CAL pi­lots and the state-owned com­pa­ny signed the agree­ment at CAL’s head of­fice in Pi­ar­co yes­ter­day.

Speak­ing af­ter the sign­ing, TTAL­PA in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions con­sul­tant Tim­o­thy Bai­ley said, “We look for­ward to col­lab­o­rat­ing with the com­pa­ny and en­sur­ing that ex­pan­sion is a suc­cess.

He clar­i­fied that there were no plans by the pi­lots to dis­rupt ser­vices based on the out­come of the ne­go­ti­a­tions.

“In fact, what we al­lud­ed to is the fact that the pi­lots have proven over time that they are go­ing above and be­yond to meet the sched­ules to en­sure the ad­di­tion­al des­ti­na­tions are ser­viced and flights are met so much so that there are thou­sands of va­ca­tion days owed to the pi­lots,” he said, adding that pi­lots as­sist the com­pa­ny with its flight sched­ule by work­ing on their days off.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, CAL thanked TTAL­PA and all em­ploy­ees for their pa­tience, pro­fes­sion­al­ism and ded­i­ca­tion through­out the process. It said the agree­ment rep­re­sents an im­por­tant step in its col­lab­o­ra­tion with TTAL­PA, un­der­scor­ing a shared com­mit­ment to ad­vanc­ing the in­ter­ests of the air­line, its em­ploy­ees and its cus­tomers.

CAL said, “The air­line al­so ac­knowl­edges the sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions of oth­er stake­hold­ers, whose sup­port and co­op­er­a­tion were in­stru­men­tal in achiev­ing this res­o­lu­tion. As al­ways, the air­line re­mains fo­cused on de­liv­er­ing ex­cep­tion­al ser­vice to its val­ued cus­tomers and as­sures the trav­el­ling pub­lic that Caribbean Air­lines’ op­er­a­tions con­tin­ue as nor­mal. The air­line ap­pre­ci­ates the con­fi­dence and sup­port of all stake­hold­ers and reaf­firms its com­mit­ment to fos­ter­ing pos­i­tive re­la­tion­ships and sus­tain­able growth for the ben­e­fit of the en­tire Caribbean re­gion.”

Un­til Mon­day, ne­go­ti­a­tions were still up in the air. TTAL­PA, had ac­cused the com­pa­ny of act­ing in bad faith, af­ter it pro­posed re­mov­ing a clause which al­lowed pi­lots to have a por­tion of their salaries paid in US dol­lars.

This clause, ac­cord­ing to TTAL­PA, had been part of the agree­ment for 13 years. This clause and an­oth­er, which had been ar­eas of con­tention in the agree­ment, now re­main.

In Oc­to­ber, Gov­ern­ment in­ter­vened and ap­proved a four per cent wage in­crease for the bar­gain­ing pe­ri­od 2015 to 2020. A four per cent of­fer was al­so ap­proved for the next bar­gain­ing pe­ri­od but the pi­lots are yet to say whether they will ac­cept the of­fer or not.