The ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Pi­lots’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTAL­PA) have tak­en a dif­fer­ent turn as the Gov­ern­ment is now set to in­ter­vene in the process.

The news was de­liv­ered to TTAL­PA mem­bers dur­ing a meet­ing with CAL’s ne­go­ti­at­ing team yes­ter­day at 2 pm, which Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands last­ed just un­der an hour.

Both par­ties are ne­go­ti­at­ing in­creas­es for the pe­ri­od 2015–2020.

TTAL­PA went from a pro­pos­al of 0 per cent, 4 per cent, 4 per cent, 4 per cent and 1 per cent for the five-year bar­gain­ing pe­ri­od to 0 per cent, 3 per cent, 3 per cent, 3 per cent and 1 per cent. The air­line has pro­posed 0 per cent, 2.5 per cent, 2.5 per cent, 2.5 per cent and 0 per cent, con­tend­ing that its five per cent lump­sum for 2018 to 2019 took in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the com­pa­ny’s fi­nan­cial po­si­tion and the in­creas­es that have al­ready been ap­plied.

How­ev­er, as Guardian Me­dia ex­clu­sive­ly re­port­ed yes­ter­day, dis­cus­sions be­gan to fall apart af­ter the state-owned air­line pro­posed to tran­si­tion pi­lots across all fleets from a month­ly salary sys­tem to an hourly sys­tem and re­duce its work guar­an­tee from 75 to 60 hours. Over­time, it said, would kick in on­ly af­ter 75 hours.

When asked by the me­dia yes­ter­day about the on­go­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions, CAL CEO Garvin Med­era said he did not want to com­ment as the com­pa­ny had not of­fi­cial­ly re­spond­ed to the union’s coun­ter­pro­pos­al and dis­cus­sions were at a sen­si­tive stage.

TTAL­PA cur­rent­ly rep­re­sents 200 out of the 217 pi­lots at CAL.

On Mon­day morn­ing, the In­dus­tri­al Court grant­ed CAL an ex-parte in­junc­tion to force pi­lots back on the job af­ter 54 of them re­port­ed sick on Sun­day, caus­ing over 50 flights to be can­celled and ground­ing hun­dreds of pas­sen­gers.

By Mon­day night, the union and com­pa­ny had briefly met and its coun­cil was ad­vised then by Med­era and the Vice Pres­i­dent of Main­te­nance and En­gi­neer­ing, Var­ma Khillawan, that the ne­go­ti­a­tions would be “dif­fer­ent” mov­ing for­ward.

Af­ter that meet­ing, the union and CAL were con­tact­ed by the Labour Min­istry and agreed for Min­is­ter Stephen Mc Clashie to hold a con­cil­ia­to­ry meet­ing with both par­ties.

Short­ly af­ter yes­ter­day’s meet­ing end­ed, TTAL­PA up­dat­ed its mem­bers on the in­volve­ment of the Min­is­ter and what would oc­cur go­ing for­ward.

“Many of you may have heard the CEO speak at the CAL press con­fer­ence ear­li­er to­day (yes­ter­day) and in­di­cat­ed that he was in fact not aware of the de­tails of the pro­pos­al made to TTAL­PA on Au­gust 15th by the VP HR (Vice Pres­i­dent Hu­man Re­sources) Roger Berke­ley. It was on­ly shared to­day, that the GoRTT was al­so not aware of the pro­pos­als made to the TTAL­PA and be­cause of events which took place this week­end, they now have a vest­ed in­ter­est and as such, wish to re­view all the pro­pos­als made by the CAL ne­go­ti­a­tions team to TTAL­PA,” the union told mem­bers.

A meet­ing is now planned for next Wednes­day (Au­gust 30).

Ac­knowl­edg­ing their dis­ap­point­ment, TTAL­PA told mem­bers it was well aware that they were an­tic­i­pat­ing a re­sponse to their coun­ter­pro­pos­al, which was de­liv­ered to the air­line on Au­gust 18, 2023.

“We ex­pect that now that the re­al de­ci­sion mak­ers are at the ta­ble, next week’s meet­ing will be a mean­ing­ful one, and it is our fer­vent hope that the de­ci­sion mak­ers come to the ta­ble in good faith as we feel se­vere­ly mis­led by the cur­rent team.”

It then not­ed to mem­bers that the union does not sup­port any breach of Sec­tion 67 (2) of the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act, which pre­vents es­sen­tial work­ers such as pi­lots from par­tic­i­pat­ing in any in­dus­tri­al ac­tion, and re­mind­ed them of the ex-parte in­junc­tion that had been grant­ed.