The Trinidad and To­ba­go Air­line Pi­lots As­so­ci­a­tion (TTAL­PA)  Mon­day warned of pos­si­ble dis­rup­tions to the ser­vice of the state-owned Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) af­ter it ac­cused the air­line’s man­age­ment of seek­ing to hi­jack the ne­go­ti­a­tions over salary in­creas­es for pi­lots.

“In a nut­shell, the board of Caribbean Air­lines has hi­jacked the ne­go­ti­a­tions. The ne­go­ti­a­tion teams be­tween Caribbean Air­lines and TTAL­PA last week Fri­day were sup­posed to sign off on a col­lec­tive agree­ment of agreed items com­ing out of Mr. Im­bert’s (Fi­nance Min­is­ter) an­nounce­ment on the 30th of Oc­to­ber."

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, when they sent us the draft, cer­tain ar­ti­cles were miss­ing from the col­lec­tive agree­ment and when we met with them they said it was an er­ror,” TTALP In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer Tim­o­thy Bai­ley told a news con­fer­ence.

“We know this is a sea­son where you have a lot of trav­el­ling. Our loved ones are com­ing in­to the coun­try etc. etc. and we do not  want to be an ob­sta­cle, but we have reached to the point where enough is enough and we are ask­ing good in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions com­mon sense to pre­vail and (for) the board to re­vert to the ini­tial po­si­tion of their ne­go­ti­a­tions, which was that they were on agree­ment with all po­si­tions that the as­so­ci­a­tion had put for­ward for the fi­nal set­tle­ment of these ne­go­ti­a­tions.”

Bai­ley told re­porters that De­cem­ber 6 had been set aside as a date for sign­ing of the agree­ment. How­ev­er, he said, “a few days be­fore, the com­pa­ny would have writ­ten to us and said that the board had a new po­si­tion and their view is that two of the ar­ti­cles should have been kept as un­re­solved”.

He said that this meant that the ar­ti­cles would have been re­moved “be­cause they are ar­ti­cles ex­ist­ing in the cur­rent agree­ment and as a re­sult of that they moved the goal post on us.

“They have put us in a po­si­tion of ei­ther take it or leave it, and … we asked them to at­tend a meet­ing with us ... since the de­ci­sion came from the lev­el of the board. They de­clined that meet­ing."

"This morn­ing be­fore we would have had this press con­fer­ence, the chair­man of the as­so­ci­a­tion would have been called out of his bed to meet with the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the com­pa­ny,”  he said, not­ing that the ar­ti­cles in ques­tion had been in place since 2021.

Last month, CAL said it wel­comed the an­nounce­ment by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert that he had au­tho­rised the of­fer it had rec­om­mend­ed to TTAL­PA  to set­tle on­go­ing salary ne­go­ti­a­tions.

“As per the state­ment from the Min­is­ter, is­sued on Oc­to­ber 30th, 2024, the of­fer com­pris­es a four per cent in­crease in salaries to cov­er the pe­ri­od Sep­tem­ber 2015 to Au­gust 2020. In ad­di­tion, there is the of­fer of a fur­ther in­crease in salaries to cov­er the pe­ri­od Sep­tem­ber 2020 to Au­gust 2023,”  CAL said in a state­ment at the time.

It said it re­mained “op­ti­mistic that a sat­is­fac­to­ry con­clu­sion can be reached in this dis­pute and all par­ties can di­rect their full fo­cus to the con­tin­ued suc­cess and growth of the air­line”.

CAL pi­lots have been stag­ing sev­er­al protests in re­cent weeks over what they de­scribed as failed wage ne­go­ti­a­tions with the air­line. They had al­so ex­pressed their dis­ap­point­ment over the lack of re­sponse to a let­ter that was hand-de­liv­ered to Im­bert’s of­fice on Oc­to­ber 14.

The let­ter con­tained pro­pos­als for the 2015-2020 ne­go­ti­a­tion pe­ri­od, as the pi­lots are cur­rent­ly work­ing un­der the terms and con­di­tions of a col­lec­tive labour agree­ment for 2010-2015.

In a state­ment in Oc­to­ber, Im­bert said that he had been in­formed by CAL that while the fig­ures the air­line pro­vid­ed to him for pub­lic dis­sem­i­na­tion re­gard­ing the pi­lots’ salaries were cor­rect, the fig­ure for pi­lots’ al­lowances pro­vid­ed by CAL was in­cor­rect.

“It is ex­pect­ed that CAL will prompt­ly cor­rect that in­ac­cu­ra­cy. How­ev­er, hav­ing giv­en this dis­pute care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion, in the in­ter­est of good in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions, the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance has to­day au­tho­rised Caribbean Air­lines to set­tle the Sep­tem­ber 2015 to Au­gust 2020 pe­ri­od with TTAL­PA with a four per cent in­crease in salaries and to of­fer the pi­lots a fur­ther four per cent in­crease in salaries for the next bar­gain­ing pe­ri­od, that is to say, the Sep­tem­ber 2020 to Au­gust 2023 pe­ri­od,” Im­bert said then.

Bai­ley said Im­bert “did his job” and that man­age­ment has “now come and is at­tempt­ing to hold the pi­lots hostage by hi­jack­ing the ne­go­ti­a­tions and mov­ing the goal post at the 11 and a half hour”.

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC -

CMC/sh/ir/2024