SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

State-owned Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) has said its re­struc­tur­ing plans in­clude send­ing home 450 work­ers, rep­re­sent­ing 25 per cent of the air­line’s staff, af­ter tak­ing a ma­jor hit due to the eco­nom­ic fall­out from the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

In a news re­lease yes­ter­day, the air­line an­nounced its unau­dit­ed fi­nan­cial re­sults from the first quar­ter of 2021 showed the com­pa­ny had lost $172.7 mil­lion with a 75 per cent de­cline in rev­enue, as com­pared to the first quar­ter of 2020.

CAL said this loss fol­lows an op­er­at­ing loss of $738 mil­lion in 2020 as the air­line has been op­er­at­ing at less than ten per cent of its nor­mal flight sched­ule.

With T&T’s bor­ders closed since March 2020, in Sep­tem­ber 2020 the air­line an­nounced it would try to stem its loss­es by im­ple­ment­ing salary cuts and send­ing some of its staff on no-pay leave.

This re­sult­ed in a first-quar­ter re­duc­tion in costs of 52 per cent as 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 re­lease stat­ed.

And al­though Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has an­nounced the coun­try’s bor­ders will be re­opened by mid-Ju­ly, CAL said fore­cast­ers have pre­dict­ed trav­el will not be in the same vol­ume as they were pre-pan­dem­ic.

“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.”

Guardian Me­dia was told the short-term rep­re­sents a pe­ri­od of one to three years.

CAL said it now has to take fur­ther steps to en­sure a sus­tain­able busi­ness mod­el in the fu­ture.

“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.”

The com­pa­ny said the 450 po­si­tions have now been deemed sur­plus.

It promised to en­gage work­ers in con­sul­ta­tion go­ing for­ward.

New Caribbean Airlines CEO Garvin Madera

Marvin Smith

Staff alert­ed via in­ter­nal memo

In a sep­a­rate memo sent to staff, CAL ex­plained its “fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ty” in greater de­tail, stat­ing the cur­rent loss­es were a dras­tic change from the prof­itable years of 2018 and 2019.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the cu­mu­la­tive fi­nan­cial im­pact has made our cur­rent po­si­tion un­ten­able as we re­main whol­ly de­pen­dant on the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go to fund con­tin­u­ing op­er­a­tions, with li­a­bil­i­ties in ex­cess of US$65 mil­lion de­spite a gov­ern­ment-guar­an­teed loan and cash in­jec­tion to­talling US$100 mil­lion,” the memo said.

As for the re­trench­ment process, the com­pa­ny sought to as­sure em­ploy­ees that the or­gan­i­sa­tion­al changes would be trans­par­ent and fair.

“This will be con­duct­ed in the course of the next month. Hu­man Re­sources will be in touch with fur­ther de­tails lat­er to­day and will con­duct on­go­ing in­for­ma­tion ses­sions and pro­vide reg­u­lar up­dates via the usu­al chan­nels,” em­ploy­ees were told.

Mes­sage to cus­tomers

In a mes­sage from CAL’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Garvin Med­era, sent to cus­tomers via email, the com­pa­ny was not so blunt.

It in­clud­ed its loss­es for 2021 but said de­spite this, it had con­tin­ued to of­fer ser­vices on many routes and ‘pro­vid­ed in­valu­able repa­tri­a­tion flights’ for Caribbean cit­i­zens.

Med­era al­so said the com­pa­ny was set to make ma­jor changes but did not go in­to de­tails of the 450 jobs that will be lost in the com­ing months.

The let­ter sought to as­sure cus­tomers that their CAL ex­pe­ri­ence would not be af­fect­ed.

“How­ev­er, we wish to re­as­sure you that these de­ci­sions will not im­pact our pas­sen­ger and car­go ser­vices, nor will it af­fect the qual­i­ty of ser­vice, safe­ty and cus­tomer care that we give to you,” Med­era wrote.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, head of Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions at CAL, Dionne Ligoure said le­gal and in­dus­tri­al pa­ra­me­ters will be ap­plied to de­ter­mine which em­ploy­ees will be sent home.

“For ex­am­ple last in first out all oth­er things be­ing equal…The im­por­tant thing to note is that there is to be a process of con­sul­ta­tion with em­ploy­ees,” Ligoure said.

She em­pha­sised the rea­son be­hind the re­trench­ment, say­ing, “The an­nounce­ment that the bor­ders are to re­open soon is very wel­come news, how­ev­er, all fore­casts sug­gest that even with the open­ing of the bor­ders, pas­sen­ger de­mand in the short to medi­um term is not go­ing to re­cov­er in a man­ner that is suf­fi­cient enough to sup­port the ex­ist­ing com­pa­ny struc­ture.”

A variety of Caribbean Airlines (CAL) aircrafts parked in hangers at the Piarco International Airport, yesterday.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

Unions, work­ers caught by sur­prise

The T&T Air­line Pi­lots As­so­ci­a­tion (TTAL­PA), which rep­re­sents about 200 pi­lots with Caribbean Air­lines, said it learnt of CAL’s in­ten­tion to lay off 450 of its staff via the me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day.

“We have as much in­for­ma­tion as the pub­lic has from the me­dia re­lease. The on­ly ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion that we have is that they in­tend to reach out to TTAL­PA lat­er this week to dis­cuss any fur­ther in­ten­tions with us, be­ing the recog­nised ma­jor­i­ty union for the pi­lots,” ex­ec­u­tive ad­min­is­tra­tor Shelly Sadaphal said.

She de­clined to com­ment fur­ther, say­ing she had giv­en all the in­for­ma­tion about the re­trench­ment ex­er­cise that she could.

Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al of the Avi­a­tion Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Al­lied Work­ers Union (ACAWU), Pe­ter Farmer was much more vo­cal.

Farmer said ACAWU has not been recog­nised by CAL’s man­age­ment and it had no knowl­edge of the plan to re­trench work­ers be­fore the me­dia re­lease was is­sued.

Farmer said ACAWU mem­bers were shell­shocked by the an­nounce­ment.

“What they are try­ing to do is to speak to work­ers in­di­vid­u­al­ly, again, that is, in my opin­ion, to hood­wink the work­ers and per­haps steal their mon­ey as they have been do­ing in the past,” Farmer said.

He said with the com­pa­ny’s state­ments speak­ing of a re­duc­tion in its fleet, he could on­ly sur­mise that this means pi­lots and flight at­ten­dants would be among the first to go.

He ac­cused CAL’s man­age­ment of on­ly seek­ing their own in­ter­est as he said the pay cuts im­ple­ment­ed last year were not done fair­ly.

“They have cut it (salaries) by every $20,000 work­ers have had to take a five per cent cut, so up to $20,000 they get five per cent, up to $40,000 is 10 per cent and above $40,000 is 15 per cent. So you have peo­ple who are work­ing for $80,000 and $100,000 and so on and if they cut their salaries at all, they cut it as those they are work­ing for $40,000,” Farmer said.

He said this was an un­fair dis­tri­b­u­tion of the com­pa­ny’s pol­i­cy to re­duce costs.

Farmer said he be­lieves the “in­vis­i­ble” im­pact of CAL’s op­er­a­tions should be care­ful­ly con­sid­ered be­fore any move to scale down its op­er­a­tions takes place.

“They (Gov­ern­ment) are just look­ing at it from what they charge to op­er­ate, in terms of the pas­sen­ger fares and the car­go charges but they are not look­ing at it from the in­vis­i­ble in­come in terms of what peo­ple spend when they come in­to Trinidad and how that may bal­ance off the cost of the air­line it­self and how some of this mon­ey keeps the econ­o­my afloat,” he said.

Works Min­istry pre­pares for re­opened bor­ders

Mean­while, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan told Guardian Me­dia he is ex­pect­ed to form part of a team that will tour the air­port in the com­ing days ahead of the mid-Ju­ly re­open­ing of the bor­ders.

Sinanan said every­thing was on track for a smooth re­open­ing of busi­ness at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

“We are in prepa­ra­tion for the open­ing and some­time this week. I will be lead­ing a team to the air­port to en­sure that every­thing is in place for the re­open­ing- it was ac­tu­al­ly sup­posed to be to­day but we had Sen­ate,” Sinanan said.

He said the team will al­so in­clude mem­bers of the Cus­toms De­part­ment, the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion and Port Health, among oth­ers.

Sinanan was asked to ad­dress ru­mours that cer­tain in­ter­na­tion­al air­lines were threat­en­ing to stop ser­vic­ing the T&T route. He said if the source of the ru­mours were re­vealed, he would launch an in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

“Once we get the all-clear and the bor­ders are open, our air­ports will be open for busi­ness again and we look for­ward to be­ing ser­viced by in­ter­na­tion­al air­lines,” he said.

Sinanan said all air­lines and pas­sen­gers will have to fol­low cer­tain pro­to­cols, which will be set by the Min­istry of Health in the com­ing weeks.