Asha Javeed

Lead Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt

As Caribbean Air­lines’ (CAL) op­er­a­tions con­tin­ued to nor­malise yes­ter­day, a resur­faced mes­sage wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ed via What­sApp, called on the air­line’s chief ex­ec­u­tive, Garvin Mede­ra, and vice pres­i­dent of Hu­man Re­sources, Roger Berke­ley, to re­sign.

The mes­sage, which start­ed from a first-per­son per­spec­tive but end­ed with the sig­na­ture “By the hard-work­ing em­ploy­ees of CAL”, raised con­cerns about the work cul­ture at the or­gan­i­sa­tion, Med­era’s lead­er­ship style, is­sues with the re­ten­tion of pi­lots at the air­line and the pri­ori­ti­sa­tion of the CAL’s ex­pen­di­ture.

It was shared to Guardian Me­dia by sev­er­al em­ploy­ees and pi­lots of CAL over the course of yes­ter­day.

And it came af­ter 93 pi­lots re­port­ed sick over a two-day pe­ri­od last week­end, which led to the can­cel­la­tion of 60 flights and cost the com­pa­ny mil­lions.

An in­junc­tion grant­ed to CAL against the T&T Air­line Pi­lots’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTAL­PA) even­tu­al­ly forced the pi­lots back to work on Mon­day, but not be­fore the air­line lost mil­lions and its brand took a beat­ing from an­gry, strand­ed pas­sen­gers.

TTAL­PA is cur­rent­ly in ne­go­ti­a­tions with CAL for 2015-2020 pe­ri­od.

Ad­dress­ing the cir­cu­lat­ing let­ter yes­ter­day, CAL’s head of cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Dionne Ligoure, said the con­cerns raised in the mes­sage were not re­flect­ed by em­ploy­ee sur­veys which showed over­all em­ploy­ee sat­is­fac­tion with work­ing at the air­line.

As for Med­era’s lead­er­ship, she said the “chief ex­ec­u­tive and man­age­ment have met with the union at all times re­quest­ed.”

“How­ev­er, a few weeks ago, when a spe­cial town hall meet­ing was con­vened for pi­lots, no pi­lot at­tend­ed. Town halls have be­come a hall­mark in the air­line’s in­ter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tions and take place every six months across the air­line’s net­work both face-to-face and on­line. The last set of town halls took place in June 2023. The town halls are com­ple­ment­ed by sig­nif­i­cant meet­ings with all staff on em­ploy­ee sur­veys, strate­gic plans, ori­en­ta­tion and team builders,” Ligoure said.

She ex­plained that the air­line was now re­cov­er­ing from the COVID fall­out but that dur­ing this time, it un­der­went changes which af­fect­ed all em­ploy­ees and that “all of Caribbean Air­lines took a pay cut.”

“The com­pa­ny did not have the cash to con­tin­ue, and had li­a­bil­i­ties in ex­cess of US$50 mil­lion plus (not count­ing loans). Fur­ther, the air­line owed mul­ti­ple ven­dors and due to se­vere lack of cash, had no choice at that time but to down­size. The jet fleet was al­so re­duced from 12 to nine and the ad­di­tion to ex­pand the ATR fleet was al­so stopped. Pi­lots were al­ready in train­ing prepar­ing for this ad­di­tion to the ATR fleet,” she said.

She not­ed that at that time, TTAL­PA sug­gest­ed the 57 per cent pay cut for pi­lots and man­age­ment worked with this sug­ges­tion.

“For ref­er­ence, JAL­PA (the Ja­maican-based union) sug­gest­ed a dif­fer­ent al­lo­ca­tion. This was in re­sponse to the bor­ders clos­ing for one year, where no flights were op­er­at­ing oth­er than those for repa­tri­a­tion. The com­pa­ny al­so paid six months full salary dur­ing the pan­dem­ic af­ter the bor­ders were closed,” she said.

She said dur­ing two sep­a­rate re­trench­ment ex­er­cis­es in 2020 and 2022, the air­line al­so pri­ori­tised the sep­a­ra­tion of pi­lots over the age of 60 who were on con­tract, ver­sus the per­ma­nent pi­lots who were just start­ing or build­ing their ca­reers.

“Now that the com­pa­ny is in a fi­nan­cial­ly bet­ter po­si­tion, we have re­called all the pi­lots who were sep­a­rat­ed. We have al­so done sig­nif­i­cant ex­pan­sions in pi­lot hir­ing with, pi­lots cur­rent­ly be­ing on­board­ed (both as Cap­tains & First Of­fi­cers),” she said.

“The com­pa­ny is ex­pand­ing in the Caribbean and as such, is re­cruit­ing in all mar­kets, not just in Trinidad and To­ba­go, as it is op­er­a­tional­ly ef­fi­cient to do so. As per our strate­gic plan, we hope to set up bases in Guyana and Bar­ba­dos to bet­ter sup­port the re­gion and ex­e­cute our man­date to im­prove re­gion­al con­nec­tiv­i­ty. This con­tra­dicts the point above about not enough pi­lots. In­ter­est­ing­ly, TTAL­PA is al­so at­tempt­ing to stop these re­gion­al hires.”

Ligoure not­ed that CAL is con­tin­u­ing to ex­pand and the air­line is brand­ing and rep­re­sent­ing the re­gion and its iden­ti­ty.

“The Wel­come Home cam­paign has been a suc­cess for the brand and is res­onat­ing with cus­tomers across our net­work,” she added.