The Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) is ex­press­ing con­cern over com­ments made by the Min­is­ter of Labour, Stephen Mc Clashie, last Fri­day where he deemed the 10 per cent wage in­crease re­quest­ed by the T&T Air­line Pi­lots As­so­ci­a­tion (TTAL­PA) as un­re­al­is­tic.

In a me­dia re­lease on Mon­day, JTUM said the com­ments made by the Min­is­ter were ex­treme­ly dis­turb­ing and ap­pear to point to a trou­bling bias in favour of the em­ploy­er.
The trade union move­ment out­lined that it is im­per­a­tive to note that the min­is­ter plays a cru­cial role in the fa­cil­i­ta­tion of set­tling trade dis­putes in­clu­sive of ne­go­ti­a­tions/col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing and is there­fore ex­pect­ed to main­tain a neu­tral stance through­out these process­es.

“As such, JTUM firm­ly be­lieves the state­ment made by the min­is­ter, is a re­gres­sive step that un­der­mines the prin­ci­ples of fair and im­par­tial labour ne­go­ti­a­tions and col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, in con­trast to the state­ments made by Mc Clashie, it has come to our at­ten­tion that TTAL­PA has been seek­ing the min­is­ter’s in­ter­ven­tion for the 2015-2018 ne­go­ti­a­tions pe­ri­od be­tween CAL and TTAL­PA from as ear­ly as 2021 and as re­cent­ly as Ju­ly 13, 2023,” JTUM said.

It in­di­cat­ed that the de­lay in the Min­is­ter’s re­sponse to these re­quests rais­es con­cerns about its com­mit­ment to fair labour prac­tices and its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure time­ly and eq­ui­table res­o­lu­tions in the in­ter­ests of all par­ties in­volved.

JTUM said that it stands in full sup­port of TTAL­PA and the pi­lots and there­fore calls on the min­is­ter to up­hold his du­ty of im­par­tial­i­ty and take im­me­di­ate steps to rec­ti­fy the sit­u­a­tion.

“We urge the Min­istry to pro­vide a fair and neu­tral plat­form for ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween CAL and TTAL­PA to en­sure that the rights and in­ter­ests of work­ers are pro­tect­ed and re­spect­ed through­out this process,” the trade union move­ment added.

Al­so speak­ing on the is­sue was Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) po­lit­i­cal leader David Ab­du­lah, who con­demned the state­ment by En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young about the pi­lots be­ing self­ish and priv­i­leged.

Ab­du­lah said the fact is that air­line pi­lots have very unique skills and bear huge re­spon­si­bil­i­ty every time they are on the job.

“Every year that a pi­lot flies, he or she is re­spon­si­ble for the lives of tens of thou­sands of peo­ple. No val­ue can be placed on that. The planes that they pi­lot can be val­ued and that runs in­to the hun­dreds of mil­lions of TT$. We as a coun­try are there­fore priv­i­leged to have some of the best pi­lots in the world who, to­geth­er with the ex­cel­lent main­te­nance teams, have en­sured that CAL – and its pre­de­ces­sor BWIA- has one of, if not the best safe­ty record in the avi­a­tion world,” he lament­ed.

He al­so crit­i­cised the state­ment by the Min­is­ter of Labour that TTAL­PA’s pro­pos­al for a 10 per cent salary in­crease was un­re­al­is­tic.