Joel Julien

The Avi­a­tion Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Al­lied Work­ers’ Union (ACAWU) has called for Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) to sus­pend its cost-cut­ting ex­er­cis­es and in­stead wait for Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert to talk in Par­lia­ment about the sit­u­a­tion fac­ing the State-owned air­line be­fore mak­ing any de­ci­sion.

The T&T gov­ern­ment owns 88.1 per cent of CAL.

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, the ACAWU re­ferred to Sep­tem­ber 29, when CAL’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Garvin Madera an­nounced to em­ploy­ees that the air­line would be im­ple­ment­ing cost-cut­ting mea­sures.

Those mea­sures in­clude salary re­duc­tions for eight months ac­cord­ing to salary lev­els and tem­po­rary lay­offs for three months.

Em­ploy­ees were set to start re­ceiv­ing re­duced salaries from next Fri­day.

“We note that so far, the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go has not re­spond­ed to the said pro­pos­al and nei­ther have they so far made a state­ment on CAL in their 2021 Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion,” the ACAWU stat­ed.

With Im­bert be­ing the line min­is­ter for CAL, the union said it be­lieves that he will speak specif­i­cal­ly to the air­line’s dif­fi­cul­ties when he makes fur­ther con­tri­bu­tions to the bud­get de­bate.

“We are firm­ly of the view that CAL should sus­pend their cost-cut­ting ex­er­cise and await that con­tri­bu­tion. If CAL in­sists on pro­ceed­ing, they should do so with the pro­vi­sions of the Re­trench­ment and Sev­er­ance Ben­e­fit Act in mind, not­ing that it would have been the in­ten­tion of Par­lia­ment to pro­tect Work­ers and Em­ploy­ers as far as is pos­si­ble from ma­nip­u­la­tion and mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the Act’s pro­vi­sions,” the union stat­ed.

The ACAWU pro­posed that the salary re­duc­tion for staff be three months in­stead of eight months util­is­ing the same per­cent­age pro­posed by CAL.

Staff re­ceiv­ing salaries less than $7,500 should not re­ceive a re­duc­tion, ACAWU stat­ed.

The great­est salary re­duc­tion 15 per cent should be placed on salaries over $40,000 it stat­ed.

“A fur­lough pe­ri­od of three months will be in­sti­tut­ed for so des­ig­nat­ed em­ploy­ees. Such af­fect­ed em­ploy­ees will re­ceive on reg­u­lar pay­days from the date of the in­sti­tu­tion of the fur­lough to the date of ab­sorp­tion back in­to CAL, a re­lief pay­ment of 50 per cent the em­ploy­ee’s base salary,” ACAWU stat­ed.

The ACAWU de­scribed the pro­pos­al as “not on­ly rea­son­able but al­so in line with our law.”

“It will be one with which we can all live,” it stat­ed.

CAL’s cost-cut­ting plans

The air­line had an­nounced on Sep­tem­ber 29, it would tem­po­rary trim staff by 33 per cent and re­duce salaries, as the air­line strug­gles with prof­itabil­i­ty due to closed bor­ders.

The air­line said its cost re­duc­tions would al­so in­clude re­duc­ing con­trac­tors and tem­po­rary work­ers and al­lowances that are not rel­e­vant at this time.

The air­line main­tained that its cur­rent op­er­a­tions are not im­pact­ed by the tem­po­rary lay­offs.

This in­cludes our car­go op­er­a­tions, the do­mes­tic air bridge be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Kingston and Bar­ba­dos based com­mer­cial ser­vices and spe­cial Gov­ern­ment-ap­proved flights to/from Trinidad and To­ba­go.

CAL said that the tem­po­rary mea­sures were to sup­port the re­cov­ery of the air­line. It said that re­duced de­mand due to the glob­al pan­dem­ic had pre­sent­ed sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges to the air­line’s rev­enue and cash po­si­tion and it must take fur­ther steps to stream­line ex­pens­es and its man­age cash.

The state­ment said that the de­ci­sion was made af­ter care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion, dis­cus­sions with key stake­hold­ers and with the sup­port of the Board of Di­rec­tors.

In March, the gov­ern­ment an­nounced the clo­sure of this coun­try’s bor­ders ef­fec­tive Sun­day, March 22 to all in­com­ing and out­go­ing in­ter­na­tion­al flights.