Caribbean Air­lines is ex­pect­ed to send home a quar­ter of its em­ploy­ees across its re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al net­work—some 450 work­ers in to­tal.

The com­pa­ny made the dis­clo­sure in an of­fi­cial state­ment re­leased to­day, in which it re­vealed loss­es of some TT$172.7m (US$25.7m) and a 75% de­cline in rev­enue, for the first quar­ter of 2021.

CAL says the re­trench­ment is nec­es­sary, in or­der to help the com­pa­ny sur­vive in the short to medi­um term, notwith­stand­ing cur­rent moves to re­open T&T’s bor­ders and fa­cil­i­tate in­ter­na­tion­al trav­el, once more.

“Af­ter im­ple­ment­ing sev­er­al short-term mea­sures to sta­bi­lize the air­line, re­gret­tably, the Com­pa­ny is now left with no choice but to un­der­take fur­ther so­lu­tions based on its ex­ist­ing needs,” the com­pa­ny’s re­lease ex­plains.  “Even with the pend­ing re-open­ing of the bor­ders of Trinidad and To­ba­go, trav­el de­mand is not ex­pect­ed to be the same as pre-COVID and cur­rent pas­sen­ger de­mand is not go­ing to re­cov­er suf­fi­cient­ly to sup­port the ex­ist­ing com­pa­ny struc­ture.”

“In or­der to sur­vive in the short to medi­um term, the com­pa­ny has to de­crease the air­craft fleet to match re­duced pas­sen­ger de­mand among oth­er ini­tia­tives. The de­crease in the air­craft fleet will re­sult in sur­plus labour. Sur­plus labour is the rea­son for the pro­posed re­trench­ment ex­er­cise,” the com­pa­ny says.

CAL will be meet­ing with its em­ploy­ees and oth­er stake­hold­ers to dis­cuss the best way to car­ry out the down­siz­ing ex­er­cise and says arrange­ments have been made to pro­vide as­sis­tance to em­ploy­ees via its Em­ploy­ee As­sis­tance Pro­gramme (EAP). 

“The Com­pa­ny takes its du­ty of care se­ri­ous­ly and has en­sured that sup­port is in place for per­sons need­ing as­sis­tance,” CAL says not­ing that these will not be tem­po­rary lay­offs, but a ter­mi­na­tion of sur­plus labour.

“In terms of em­ploy­ees, the air­line has de­ter­mined that 25 per cent of its work­force or about 450 po­si­tions through­out its net­work is sur­plus to its cur­rent needs,” the com­pa­ny says. 

It adds: “A re­trench­ment is a ter­mi­na­tion of em­ploy­ment for rea­son of re­dun­dan­cy, that is sur­plus labour, while a tem­po­rary lay-off is a tem­po­rary sus­pen­sion of the em­ploy­ment con­tract, but with­out ter­mi­na­tion of em­ploy­ment.”

Ac­cord­ing to CAL, its cur­rent flights and car­go op­er­a­tions would not be af­fect­ed by the changes.

“These mea­sures will not af­fect flights, car­go op­er­a­tions or the qual­i­ty of ser­vice, safe­ty and cus­tomer care that cus­tomers ex­pect,” the com­pa­ny as­sures.

The fol­low­ing is the full text of the state­ment re­leased by CAL, to­day:

CARIBBEAN AIR­LINES FIRST QUAR­TER RE­SULTS AND STRATE­GIC RE­STRUC­TURE

Port of Spain, Trinidad & To­ba­go, June 21, 2021. Caribbean Air­lines to­day an­nounced its unau­dit­ed fi­nan­cial re­sults for the first quar­ter of 2021, record­ing a loss of TT$172.7m (US$25.7m) and a 75% de­cline in rev­enue, com­pared to the same pe­ri­od in 2020.

The loss­es fol­low a sim­i­lar down­turn in 2020, which saw an op­er­at­ing loss of TT$738m (US$109.2m) com­pared to op­er­at­ing prof­its for 2018 and 2019. Since the be­gin­ning of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and the sus­pen­sion of op­er­a­tions at its base in Trinidad and To­ba­go, the air­line has seen pas­sen­ger num­bers plum­met, and flight num­bers re­duced to less than 10% of nor­mal op­er­a­tions.

De­spite this, the air­line con­tin­ued to of­fer ser­vices on many of its routes and pro­vid­ed in­valu­able repa­tri­a­tion flights for Caribbean cit­i­zens. Giv­en the fi­nan­cial im­pact of the pan­dem­ic, Caribbean Air­lines proac­tive­ly re­duced costs, and Q1 2021 ex­pens­es are down 52% com­pared to the same pe­ri­od in 2020. Fur­ther, the air­line was kept afloat through a gov­ern­ment guar­an­teed loan and a cash in­jec­tion by the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go to­talling US$100 mil­lion.

The an­nounce­ment that the bor­ders of Trinidad and To­ba­go may soon re­open is wel­come news, but all fore­casts sug­gest that the recom­mence­ment of trav­el will not be in the same vol­umes as they were pre-COVID. There­fore, un­til air trav­el re­gains its pre-COVID mo­men­tum the air­line will need to ad­just its op­er­a­tions to cater for a re­duced scale of de­mand af­ter the open­ing of the bor­ders. Put sim­ply, pas­sen­ger de­mand in the short to medi­um term is not go­ing to re­cov­er suf­fi­cient­ly to sup­port the ex­ist­ing com­pa­ny struc­ture af­ter the re­open­ing of the bor­ders.

As a con­se­quence, Caribbean Air­lines is re­quired to take fur­ther steps to en­sure it has a sus­tain­able busi­ness mod­el for 2021 and be­yond. These steps in­clude ma­jor cost re­duc­tions in all ar­eas of the air­line's op­er­a­tions, specif­i­cal­ly its hu­man re­source com­ple­ment, its fleet and oth­er as­sets, and its route net­work.

As part of the stream­lin­ing strat­e­gy, the num­ber of jets in the fleet will be re­duced, for the time be­ing, over the course of 2021. Its route net­work will al­so be ad­just­ed to re­flect the chang­ing mar­ket.

In terms of em­ploy­ees, the air­line has de­ter­mined that 25% of its work­force or about 450 po­si­tions through­out its net­work is sur­plus to its cur­rent needs. The Com­pa­ny will em­bark on con­sul­ta­tion with the em­ploy­ees and oth­er stake­hold­ers, with re­spect to treat­ing with this sur­plus labour sit­u­a­tion.

Caribbean Air­lines pas­sen­ger and car­go ser­vices con­tin­ue to op­er­ate, with all the lat­est flight de­tails avail­able on www.caribbean-air­lines.com. The air­line thanks its val­ued cus­tomers for their con­tin­ued sup­port.