KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) is on board with Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert’s ap­proved four per cent wage in­crease of­fer to pi­lots, but the union rep­re­sent­ing them isn’t ready to fly with all of the pro­pos­al just yet.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, CAL said it wel­comed Im­bert’s an­nounce­ment that he’s au­tho­rised the of­fer to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Air­line Pi­lots’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTAL­PA) to set­tle on­go­ing salary ne­go­ti­a­tions.

This, af­ter pi­lots protest­ed out­side his of­fice on Wednes­day.

Dressed in their uni­forms, sev­er­al pi­lots showed their frus­tra­tion with the on­go­ing ne­go­ti­a­tion process dur­ing the protest ac­tion. Pri­or to this, pi­lots al­so held oth­er silent demon­stra­tions at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port this month.

Hours af­ter the protest ac­tion, the Min­istry of Fi­nance an­nounced that the wage of­fer in­cludes a four per cent salary in­crease for the pe­ri­od Sep­tem­ber 2015 to Au­gust 2020 and a fur­ther four per cent of­fer for the pe­ri­od Sep­tem­ber 2020 to Au­gust 2023.

The union had ini­tial­ly re­ject­ed CAL’s 7.5 per cent wage in­crease of­fer.

In the re­lease yes­ter­day, CAL said it re­mains op­ti­mistic that a sat­is­fac­to­ry con­clu­sion can now be reached in the dis­pute.

How­ev­er, the union said yes­ter­day that it is on­ly in agree­ment with a four per cent in­crease for the first col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing pe­ri­od end­ing Au­gust 2020 and not the sec­ond pe­ri­od.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia via tele­phone, Tim­o­thy Bai­ley, a con­sul­tant for TTAL­PA, said the of­fer for the sec­ond pe­ri­od is yet to be dis­cussed by the union.

Bai­ley said, “As you all know, that came out yes­ter­day (Wednes­day) evening. To­day (Thurs­day) is Di­vali, so there wasn’t any meet­ing to­day, and they will have to meet be­fore that de­ci­sion is made... I want to be clear we have no pro­pos­als be­fore us from Caribbean Air­lines for any set­tle­ment for the sec­ond pe­ri­od. “What we have is the min­is­ter say­ing he is will­ing to set­tle the pe­ri­od, he’s ap­prov­ing four per cent. I am not aware that there are any ne­go­ti­a­tions go­ing on at this time for the sec­ond pe­ri­od, so con­sid­er­a­tion has to be giv­en to what has been ap­proved and that is a dis­cus­sion that has to be had be­tween the union, its ex­ec­u­tive and its mem­ber­ship.”

These sen­ti­ments were al­so echoed by TTAL­PA of­fi­cials, who told Guardian Me­dia on Wednes­day that it had not­ed the four per cent of­fer for the oth­er bar­gain­ing pe­ri­od and will con­sult with its mem­bers be­fore adopt­ing a po­si­tion on the of­fer.

The pi­lots are cur­rent­ly op­er­at­ing on an ex­pired nine-year col­lec­tive agree­ment and salary.