Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Ten­sions be­tween the T&T Air­line Pi­lots’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTAL­PA) and Caribbean Air­lines Lim­it­ed (CAL) have es­ca­lat­ed, with the union mak­ing a bold pub­lic state­ment with a bill­board erect­ed on BWIA Boule­vard, near Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

TTAL­PA said the bill­board, which was erect­ed on Wednes­day, re­flects the pi­lots’ grow­ing frus­tra­tion over un­re­solved salary is­sues and de­layed col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions. The union’s in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions con­sul­tant, Tim­o­thy Bai­ley said it is an “in­no­v­a­tive” and “cre­ative” way of ex­press­ing the pi­lots’ dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the han­dling of their con­cerns.

“Pi­lots are cat­e­gorised as es­sen­tial work­ers, which lim­its their abil­i­ty to take cer­tain in­dus­tri­al ac­tions. This bill­board is a means of rais­ing pub­lic aware­ness about our sit­u­a­tion,” he ex­plained.

The dis­pute stems from salary in­creas­es ap­proved by Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert on Oc­to­ber 30. The ap­proved in­creas­es in­clud­ed four per cent for the pe­ri­od 2015-2020 and an ad­di­tion­al four per cent for 2020-2023. How­ev­er, al­though a col­lec­tive agree­ment was signed for 2015-2020 on De­cem­ber 11, CAL has not com­plet­ed the full pay­ment of ar­rears owed to pi­lots. In ad­di­tion, no progress has been made on the 2020-2023 pe­ri­od, de­spite TAL­PA’s sub­mis­sion of a “no change” pro­pos­al align­ing with the ap­proved four per cent in­crease.

“The com­pa­ny has not pri­ori­tised ad­dress­ing the sec­ond pe­ri­od, leav­ing pi­lots and the union with no choice but to re­fer the mat­ter to the Min­istry of Labour,” Bai­ley said.

He added that the Fi­nance Min­istry has not yet re­spond­ed with con­cil­i­a­tion dates to fa­cil­i­tate dis­cus­sions be­tween TAL­PA and CAL.

“We are ap­peal­ing to both Caribbean Air­lines man­age­ment and the Min­istry of Labour to treat this mat­ter with the ur­gency it de­serves. Pi­lots’ du­ties are es­sen­tial, but so too is the need for fair treat­ment and time­ly res­o­lu­tion of their in­dus­tri­al is­sues,” Bai­ley said.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, CAL’s head of cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions Dionne Ligoure said ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween the air­line and union are on­go­ing and the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to op­er­ate in good faith.