BAVI­TA GOPAULCHAN

Se­nior Re­porter

bavi­ta.gopaulchan

@guardian.co.tt

Ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween Caribbean Air­lines Lim­it­ed (CAL) and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Air­line Pi­lots’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTAL­PA) are set to go be­fore a cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that this was con­firmed dur­ing yes­ter­day’s meet­ing be­tween both par­ties, al­though no Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter or rep­re­sen­ta­tive was present at the ses­sion.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment last evening, CAL’s Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Man­ag­er, Dionne Liguore, said while she could not give any up­dates on the meet­ing, “ne­go­ti­a­tions con­tin­ue in good faith”.

TTAL­PA of­f­cials mean­while would on­ly de­scribe the hour-long meet­ing as “am­i­ca­ble”.

Mean­while, the Min­is­ter of Labour is prepar­ing to in­ter­vene in the im­passe but has no time­line in which he will do so.

Ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween both par­ties for the bar­gain­ing pe­ri­od 2015–2020 broke down af­ter they were un­able to agree on any pay in­crease of­fers. TTAL­PA pro­posed a 10 per cent hike for the five-year pe­ri­od, while the air­line coun­terof­fered 7.5 per cent. Un­able to reach an agree­ment, TTAL­PA said it has been reach­ing out to the Min­istry of Labour via of­fi­cial let­ters for its in­ter­ven­tion since 2021. How­ev­er, it was on­ly af­ter 54 pi­lots re­port­ed sick on Au­gust 20th, forc­ing the can­cel­la­tion of 56 flights, that TTAL­PA said two mem­bers of the min­istry’s Con­cil­i­a­tion Ad­vi­so­ry and Ad­vo­ca­cy Unit con­tact­ed them on Au­gust 21 and of­fered me­di­a­tion, to which they im­me­di­ate­ly agreed.

In a state­ment to the me­dia yes­ter­day, Mc­Clashie con­firmed sev­er­al cor­re­spon­dences were sent to the min­istry but sought to clar­i­fy that, to date, nei­ther par­ty had made a re­quest to him, pur­suant to Sec­tion 51 (3), by way of a trade dis­pute, to en­able ei­ther par­ty to prop­er­ly re­port a break­down in ne­go­ti­a­tions.

Con­tact­ed by Guardian Me­dia short­ly af­ter the state­ment was is­sued, Mc Clashie con­firmed that the con­cil­i­a­tion unit has been “talk­ing with them”.

“They will be the first re­spon­ders to those is­sues. If the is­sue be­comes con­tentious and they can­not ar­rive at a mu­tu­al po­si­tion, it is open to ei­ther par­ty to ask for the min­is­ter’s in­ter­ven­tion,” Mc Clashie in­di­cat­ed.

“We point­ed out to the Pi­lots’ As­so­ci­a­tion that the mat­ter was in­deed stat­ue-barred and they need­ed to get their house in or­der and to make a for­mal re­quest for an ex­ten­sion to the min­istry, and that was nev­er done. In fact, we’ve been talk­ing with them be­cause this is a na­tion­al is­sue and we can, in fact, in­ter­vene, even though there is no dis­pute lodged at the min­istry at this point in time.”

He added, “Now, let me say that the min­is­ter can al­so use dis­cre­tion on what is hap­pen­ing in the pub­lic for dis­cre­tionary in­ter­ven­tion. That has not been done yet but the CAD group con­tin­ues in good faith, recog­nis­ing the is­sues are na­tion­al in na­ture, even re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al.”

Asked to clar­i­fy whether he will be in­ter­ven­ing at any lev­el, Mc­Clashie stat­ed, “Yes, I am pre­pared to do so, and we are do­ing so be­cause the Min­isty of Labour is ac­tive­ly in­volved in get­ting the in­for­ma­tion, so as soon as I feel I have enough in­for­ma­tion at hand and the clar­i­ty with re­gards to the po­si­tions, I will have that meet­ing but I am not go­ing in­to the meet­ing as the min­is­ter to help ne­go­ti­ate.”

The min­is­ter, who ad­mit­ted to be­ing con­cerned about the stalled ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween TTAL­PA and CAL, said if the mat­ter is not re­solved at the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion stage, it will have to go be­fore the In­dus­tri­al Court.

“I am not say­ing it is even close to be­ing there, one would have to go there with the facts of the mat­ter as per the two par­ties and where they stand. The is­sue be­tween op­pos­ing par­ties tends to get a lit­tle worse be­fore they get bet­ter,” he added, as he urged CAL and TTAL­PA to con­tin­ue hold­ing dis­cus­sions.

Re­spond­ing to the call by the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice for the labour leg­is­la­tion to be amend­ed to al­low es­sen­tial work­ers to take in­dus­tri­al ac­tion, Mc Clashie said this is cur­rent­ly not on his radar.

He said, “But short of strike ac­tion, they can in an ap­pro­pri­ate way let their feel­ings be known and protest ac­cord­ing­ly, but it doesn’t al­low them the free­dom to with­hold labour and go and protest.”