The an­nounce­ment by Caribbean Air­lines Ltd (CAL) on Mon­day that it "de­cid­ed to en­gage the process­es un­der the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act (IRA)" by re­port­ing its com­pen­sa­tion dis­pute with its pi­lots' union to the Min­is­ter of Labour," cre­ates a mea­sure of un­cer­tain­ty for the air­line dur­ing De­cem­ber, which is gen­er­al­ly a high-rev­enue month for most air­lines.

The un­cer­tain­ty aris­es be­cause un­hap­pi­ness by CAL's pi­lots over the pace of the ne­go­ti­a­tions for a col­lec­tive agree­ment from the pe­ri­od Sep­tem­ber 1, 2015, to Au­gust 31, 2018 led to a sick out by 93 pi­lots dur­ing the week­end of Au­gust 18 to 20.

As the CAL pi­lots pro­vide an es­sen­tial ser­vice, their sick out was il­le­gal un­der the IRA. But the in­dus­tri­al ac­tion tak­en by the pi­lots re­sult­ed in more than 60 flights be­ing post­poned or can­celled. That week­end dis­rup­tion, dur­ing a high-rev­enue pe­ri­od for the air­line, re­sult­ed in at least $15 mil­lion in di­rect costs for CAL.

The dis­rup­tion al­so sul­lied the air­line's rep­u­ta­tion for re­li­a­bil­i­ty and con­sis­ten­cy, which it is work­ing hard to re­cov­er by en­sur­ing that the on-time per­for­mance of its flights is as high as pos­si­ble.

In its news re­lease on Mon­day, CAL ex­plained that the ne­go­ti­a­tions for the col­lec­tive agree­ment were re­port­ed to the Min­is­ter of Labour be­cause of "the chal­lenges faced in reach­ing a mu­tu­al­ly agree­able res­o­lu­tion."

Ac­cord­ing to the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act, when dis­putes are re­port­ed to the Min­is­ter of Labour, he shall take steps to se­cure a set­tle­ment of the dis­pute by util­is­ing con­cil­i­a­tion with­in 14 days.

That pe­ri­od of con­cil­i­a­tion can be ex­tend­ed. But if an un­re­solved dis­pute re­mains af­ter the ex­ten­sion of the con­cil­i­a­tion, the is­sue "shall be re­ferred by the Min­is­ter to the In­dus­tri­al Court for set­tle­ment."

The process of con­cil­i­a­tion by the Min­is­ter of Labour is like­ly to push the is­sue of com­pen­sa­tion for the CAL pi­lots well in­to next year. Giv­en the im­por­tance of rev­enue gen­er­a­tion in the next four months, from Christ­mas to Car­ni­val to East­er, it is im­por­tant to the air­line's fu­ture sus­tain­abil­i­ty that it put the com­pen­sa­tion is­sues of its pi­lots be­hind it.

Fur­ther de­lays in the set­tle­ment of the pi­lots' com­pen­sa­tion is­sues could lead to the air­line suf­fer­ing fu­ture tur­bu­lence.

In­stead of, or along­side, the con­cil­i­a­tion ef­forts of the Min­is­ter of Labour, what is re­quired is the ro­bust in­ter­ven­tion of Cor­po­ra­tion Sole, the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, guid­ed by the air­line's board, to as­sert the na­tion­al in­ter­est in CAL.

As the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the 88.1 per cent of CAL owned by T&T, it is for Cor­po­ra­tion Sole, guid­ed by the board, to de­ter­mine whether the pi­lots' com­pen­sa­tion re­quests are af­ford­able in the con­text of the air­line's fore­cast of rev­enue gen­er­a­tion and op­er­a­tional in­come. That is a task that the CAL board must un­der­take as it seeks to guide the in­ter­ven­tion of the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance.

That in­ter­ven­tion is im­por­tant not on­ly be­cause of T&T's ma­jor­i­ty own­er­ship of CAL, but be­cause the Gov­ern­ment of T&T en­sured that the air­line stayed afloat dur­ing the COVID-19 pe­ri­od by guar­an­tee­ing loans to it. The air­line must al­so be op­er­at­ed in a way that en­sures that its ex­pan­sion plans do not jeop­ar­dise its abil­i­ty to ser­vice its debt.