Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert says he of­fered to set­tle the wage ne­go­ti­a­tion im­passe be­tween Caribbean Air­lines and pi­lots to put an end to mis­in­for­ma­tion float­ing around.

Speak­ing dur­ing a vir­tu­al news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day to ad­dress con­cerns about the coun­try’s sup­ply of for­eign ex­change, Im­bert ac­knowl­edged the res­o­lu­tion of the first dis­pute for the pe­ri­od 2015 to 2020. He said he was pleased to put an end to the is­sues raised by the pi­lots.

But he al­so ad­dressed con­cerns about the mis­in­for­ma­tion that had sur­round­ed the ne­go­ti­a­tions and strained the col­lec­tive agree­ments.

“There was a lot of to­ing and fro­ing, and in fact, there was some­thing float­ing around that had ab­solute­ly noth­ing to do with me, but one of my chal­lenges is that every­one said ‘it is him’,” Min­is­ter Im­bert ex­plained.

“There was some­thing float­ing around where some­one had of­fered or men­tioned to the pi­lots that for some of the years af­ter 2020, they would re­ceive a ze­ro per cent in­crease. I did not agree with that. Al­though I was be­ing blamed un­fair­ly for it, with­out my knowl­edge, I didn’t even know this was go­ing on.”

To re­solve the is­sue, the Fi­nance Min­is­ter said the de­ci­sion was made to set­tle the first pe­ri­od and of­fer a four per cent in­crease for the 2022-2023 pe­ri­od as well.

“I was re­al­ly hap­py I was able to get that out of the way be­cause there was so much mis­in­for­ma­tion and scape­goat­ing as al­ways hap­pens where I am con­cerned, un­for­tu­nate­ly,” he added.

Caribbean Air­lines pi­lots rep­re­sent­ed by their union The Trinidad and To­ba­go Air­line Pi­lots As­so­ci­a­tion raised con­cerns sev­er­al times about the sta­tus of wage ne­go­ti­a­tions, which they said had been un­re­solved since 2015.

The pi­lots held plac­ards and walked through the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port to high­light their is­sues. They al­so pick­et­ed out­side the of­fice of the Fi­nance Min­is­ter on In­de­pen­dence Square, Port-of-Spain. 

—Ot­to Car­ring­ton