Gail Alexan­der

With bor­ders re­open­ing to­mor­row, the Avi­a­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Al­lied Work­ers’ Union (ACAWU) is ex­am­in­ing pro­pos­als from Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) man­age­ment on the re­struc­tur­ing of the air­line’s cab­in crew, with the op­tion to con­tin­ue to stay at home un­til No­vem­ber mi­nus pay, or vol­un­teer for re­trench­ment.

ACAWU gen­er­al sec­re­tary Pe­ter Farmer con­firmed this yes­ter­day in a state­ment, fol­low­ing Wednes­day’s meet­ing be­tween ACAWU and CAL man­age­ment.

CAL, now re­struc­tur­ing, is in con­sul­ta­tions with work­ers’ rep­re­sen­ta­tives, in­clud­ing on the pro­ject­ed staff re­duc­tion of 450 peo­ple.

Farmer said ACAWU rep­re­sents sev­er­al hun­dred work­ers from cab­in crew and purs­ers to ground staff and oth­er lev­els.

Her said ACAWU mem­bers are all sup­port­ive of to­mor­row’s re­open­ing and will be work­ing, but “we just don’t want re­trench­ment.”

CAL is ready for to­mor­row’s bor­der re-open­ing op­er­a­tions with in­ter­na­tion­al and do­mes­tic air­bridge flights sched­uled.

Man­age­ment said CAL’s sys­tems, which are ac­cus­tomed to work­ing with strict reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works, are in sync with pro­ce­dures be­ing in­tro­duced for re­open­ing.

CAL was ground­ed in March 2020 by pan­dem­ic-in­duced bor­der clo­sure, sub­se­quent­ly lim­it­ed to repa­tri­a­tion flights.

ACAWU and CAL man­age­ment held meet­ings on Ju­ly 9 and 14 on CAL’s pro­pos­als.

Farmer added, “The re­duc­tion of man­pow­er re­quire­ment through lay­offs and re­trench­ment is a pre­rog­a­tive of com­pa­ny man­age­ment. With that caveat, ACAWU can say there have been some pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ments in terms of what was ini­tial­ly in the pub­lic do­main.

“Orig­i­nal­ly, CAL de­ter­mined that with re­duc­tion of fleet num­bers and re­duc­tion of sched­ule, there must nec­es­sar­i­ly be a change in man­pow­er re­quire­ments. How­ev­er, ACAWU’s first pri­or­i­ty was that of job preser­va­tion. CAL is now on record as say­ing that per­tain­ing to jobs with­in ACAWU’s bar­gain­ing unit, it’s un­like­ly that per­ma­nent staff (in­clud­ing cab­in crew) will be af­fect­ed in terms of re­trench­ment.

“That be­ing said, there still has to be dis­cus­sions on the way for­ward, as CAL will not be op­er­at­ing at its pre­vi­ous lev­els in the im­me­di­ate fu­ture. CAL’s ex­pect­ed to op­er­ate at pre­vi­ous lev­els in the sec­ond quar­ter of 2022.’’

ACAWU general secretary Peter Farmer

Two op­tions be­fore staff

Still, Farmer said that was on­ly one po­si­tion, since CAL man­age­ment has al­so giv­en two oth­er po­si­tions, for ex­am­ple, with cab­in crew.

Op­tion one in­volves em­ploy­ees con­tin­u­ing to stay at home with­out pay for a fur­ther three months, bring­ing their pe­ri­od of un­em­ploy­ment to a to­tal of 12 months with­out pay.

Farmer said that three months will take them to No­vem­ber with­out pay and af­ter it was pro­posed that on a phased ba­sis, staff would be called out ac­cord­ing to sched­ul­ing needs.

The sec­ond op­tion in­volves em­ploy­ees be­ing giv­en the choice of vol­un­teer­ing for re­trench­ment and be­ing paid in ac­cor­dance with the Re­trench­ment Act.

Farmer added, “But these pro­pos­als ‘can­not fly’. Re­trench­ment is a pre­rog­a­tive of the em­ploy­er, thus, the de­ci­sion is not that of the em­ploy­ee and re­trench­ment can­not be viewed as a vol­un­tary sep­a­ra­tion of­fer.

“Work­ers have been home since Oc­to­ber 2020 with­out pay. They made the sac­ri­fice, ex­pect­ing bor­ders would re­open and they’d re­turn to work. ACAWU can’t ac­cept re­trench­ment, VSEP pack­ages should have at least been of­fered.”

ACAWU has pro­posed a sys­tem of crew ro­ta­tion with sub­sis­tence al­lowance for off-line pe­ri­ods as CAL in its op­er­a­tional pro­jec­tions doesn’t ex­pect to op­er­ate at pre-COVID lev­els un­til the sec­ond quar­ter 2022.

CAL re­sponds

CAL com­mu­ni­ca­tion man­ag­er Dionne Ligoure said yes­ter­day, “Con­sul­ta­tions are on­go­ing and the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to deal with stake­hold­ers in good faith.”

ACAWU al­so pro­posed that CAL man­age­ment pe­ti­tion the Fi­nance Min­istry and Gov­ern­ment on be­half of af­fect­ed work­ers to ex­pe­dite pan­dem­ic re­lief pay­ments, plus ask the Min­istry of Fi­nance and the Gov­ern­ment to craft a pe­ti­tion that con­tin­u­ous­ly ap­peals to Cari­com part­ners to en­sure CAL has a priv­i­leged po­si­tion in the re­gion, which en­sures max­imi­sa­tion of its mar­ket share.