T&T Air­line Pi­lots As­so­ci­a­tion (TTAL­PA) and Caribbean Air­lines have agreed that all pi­lots' salaries will be cut by 57 per cent—just over half—for the next three months, to sup­port CAL's cost cut­ting mea­sures amid the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

TTAL­PA rep­re­sents CAL's es­ti­mat­ed 149 pi­lots. The de­vel­op­ment halts CAL’s plan to start send­ing home some pi­lots on three months' No-Pay Leave from Mon­day.

The pay cut will halve the salaries of all CAL’s pi­lots un­til Jan­u­ary 2021.

It will al­so af­fect oth­er as­pects of their pay up to June 2021, but they will keep their jobs.

TT­TAL­PA had been ne­go­ti­at­ing with CAL in re­cent weeks on the is­sue.

CAL re­ceived re­vised doc­u­ments from TAL­PA last Fri­day. A Mem­o­ran­dum of Agree­ment (MOA) was signed by CAL Hu­man Re­sources head Roger Berkley and TTAL­PA head, cap­tain Lar­ry Imamshah lat­er that day.

“It’s a bit­ter­sweet sit­u­a­tion," said TTAL­PA's in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions con­sul­tant Ger­ard Pinard. "It meant be­tween a rock and hard place, but we're mak­ing the sac­ri­fices and reached an agree­ment."

CAL com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Dionne Ligoure said dis­cus­sions which had been on­go­ing were ex­pect­ed to be con­clud­ed short­ly.

Pi­lots were among the em­ploy­ees which CAL planned to send home tem­porar­i­ly due to ef­fects from the pan­dem­ic which closed T&T's bor­ders. Up to June, the ground­ed air­line lost $96 mil­lion.

Last month CAL an­nounced it would send home about one-third of staff—600—for three months and in­sti­tute pay cuts for oth­ers earn­ing $7,500 over eight months start­ing last Thurs­day. CAL was to ex­pect­ed to start is­su­ing let­ters on Mon­day to pi­lots.

Pinard said af­ter CAL re­ject­ed an ini­tial TTAL­PA pro­pos­al, TTAL­PA sug­gest­ed a salary cut and CAL called the 57 per cent fig­ure and oth­er con­di­tions. He de­tailed the sit­u­a­tion.

Apart from want­i­ng to en­sure CAL and T&T keep steady, pi­lots then vot­ed among them­selves to ac­cept the three months 57 per cent pay cut for some of their fel­low pi­lots—who would have been sent home tem­porar­i­ly with­out pay—to con­tin­ue work­ing.

Pinard said pi­lots ac­cept­ed the pay cut de­spite op­er­at­ing with salary rates ne­go­ti­at­ed in 2014. Ne­go­ti­a­tions are out­stand­ing for col­lec­tive agree­ments for 2015-2018 and 2018-2021.

Un­der the agree­ment for fleet man­agers cap­tains, pi­lots:

* If the sit­u­a­tion im­proves, both sides will re­view the agree­ment.

* Start­ing Mon­day, sub­ject to ear­li­er ter­mi­na­tion and based on what was agreed by both par­ties the agree­ment will end by June 18, 2020.

* All pi­lots will for­go 57 per cent of salary for three months start­ing Mon­day un­til Jan­u­ary 18, 2021. Pen­sion plan con­tri­bu­tions will be tem­porar­i­ly halt­ed for the pe­ri­od.

* From Jan­u­ary 2021 pi­lots will al­so for­go a por­tion of their salary for five months. Those earn­ing $21,000 to $40,000 will take a ten per cent cut. Those earn­ing over $40,000 will take a 15 per cent cut.

* At the end of eight months on June 18, 2021, CAL agrees to re­store pi­lots to full sub­stan­tive salaries.

* In event of re­trench­ment ex­er­cis­es be­ing con­tem­plat­ed any time dur­ing the agree­ment, pi­lots' base salary will be used as a ba­sis for sev­er­ance ben­e­fits.

With the agree­ment, the re­call of pi­lots to fly­ing will be ac­cord­ing first­ly to op­er­a­tional re­quire­ments and sec­ond­ly, the se­nior­i­ty list.

CAL's fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion will be re­viewed month­ly. In event of im­proved cir­cum­stances dur­ing the time, par­ties will re­view terms of the agree­ment.

Pinard said CAL had in good faith been pay­ing pi­lots since the lock­down, "So pi­lots felt they al­so had to act in good faith. Though I don’t know who would have ac­cept­ed this sort of salary cut, es­pe­cial­ly in this sec­tor.

"But every­body's pre­pared to make sac­ri­fices for pay cuts hop­ing things im­prove for CAL and T&T. CAL said they have no more Gov­ern­ment fi­nanc­ing and had to find ways to keep go­ing to achieve tar­get sav­ings."

TAL­PA head Imamshah last Fri­day con­firmed, "Pi­lots are very will­ing to un­der­take salary sac­ri­fices to pre­vent go­ing home with­out pay."

Pinard added, "TTAL­PA should be com­mend­ed for its re­spon­si­ble sac­ri­fice to en­sure CAL re­mains a vi­able con­cern and trusts that these sac­ri­fices will not go un­no­ticed when bar­gain­ing recom­mences for the out­stand­ing col­lec­tive agree­ments."

TTAL­PA's pay cut ac­cep­tance is the lat­est ac­tion among sec­tors try­ing to deal with in­creased costs due to the COVID pan­dem­ic. Many ar­eas have at­tempt­ed to re­tool since the pan­dem­ic hit. Last week Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced a pro­pos­al to cap the tax ex­emp­tions on gov­ern­ment ve­hi­cles.

Some pi­lots said it was fair if they were co-op­er­at­ing to give CAL sav­ings and ac­cept­ing pay cuts, no pi­lots should be sent home. "Pi­lots have vest­ed in­ter­ests in CAL."

While CAL has been ground­ed, small char­tered air­craft have been busy trans­port­ing those who have ob­tained ex­emp­tions.

HOW IT WAS ACHIEVED:

* CAL’s ini­tial plan was to re­tain the min­i­mum num­ber of staff re­quired to main­tain their re­duced lev­el of op­er­a­tion, and send home the rest of em­ploy­ees on No-Pay Leave for 90 days, in the first in­stance, while re­duc­ing the salaries of those kept in ser­vice by five per cent to 20 per cent for eight months.

* CAL es­ti­mat­ed sav­ing US$1.8 mil­lion across the en­tire staff com­ple­ment. Based on that pro­posed plan, sav­ings of US$1 mil­lion was pro­ject­ed from pi­lots’ salaries alone.

* TTAL­PA ini­tial­ly pro­posed CAL could achieve their de­sired cost sav­ings by ap­ply­ing a 30 per cent salary re­duc­tion across the en­tire com­pa­ny. Based on their to­tal per­son­nel costs of US$6 mil­lion, that would re­sult in the de­sired US$1.8 mil­lion in sav­ings.

* CAL re­ject­ed TTAL­PA’s sug­ges­tion and went ahead with their orig­i­nal plan for the rest of staff, send­ing peo­ple home on No Pay Leave for 90 days.

* TTAL­PA re­fused to ac­cept this pro­pos­al and in­sist­ed on ne­go­ti­at­ing a bet­ter arrange­ment for pi­lots that wouldn't re­sult in any pi­lots be­ing sent off on No Pay Leave—even if it meant tak­ing a salary sac­ri­fice in­stead.

* CAL ad­vised TTAL­PA it would re­quire a salary sac­ri­fice of 57 per cent from all pi­lots for 90 days and sus­pen­sion of pen­sion plan con­tri­bu­tions over the same pe­ri­od, in or­der to achieve the de­sired sav­ings. Al­so, salary sac­ri­fices of be­tween 15 per cent and 20 per cent of pi­lots’ salaries for five months af­ter the end of the ini­tial 90-day pe­ri­od.