PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC -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. Last Friday, the negotiation teams between Caribbean Airlines and TTALPA 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 traveling, our loved ones are coming into the country, etc. and we do not want to be an obstacle, but we have reached the point where enough is enough, and we are asking good industrial relations common sense prevail, and the board reverts 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 the signing of the agreement but that “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 goalpost 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 board level, they declined that meeting.
‘This morning, before we would have had this press conference, the association chairman would have been called out of his bed to meet with the company’s chief executive officer,” he said, noting that the articles in question had been in place since 2021.
Last month, CAL said it welcomed Finance Minister Colm Imbert’s announcement that he had authorized the offer it has 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 percent increase in salaries to cover the period from September 2015 to August 2020. In addition, there is the offer of a further salary increase to cover September 2020 to August 2023,” CAL said in a statement.
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 over what they described as failed wage negotiations with the airline in recent weeks. They also expressed their disappointment at the need for a response to a letter hand-delivered to Imbert’s office on October 14.
The letter contained proposals for the 2015-2020 negotiation period, as the pilots are working under the terms and conditions of a collective labor agreement for 2010-2015.
In an October statement, Imbert said that CAL had informed him that while the airline’s figures for public dissemination regarding the pilots’ salaries were correct, the figure for pilots’ allowances provided by CAL needed to be corrected.
“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 authorized Caribbean Airlines to settle the September 2015 to August 2020 period with TTALPA with a four percent increase in salaries and to offer the pilots a further four percent 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 11 and a half “hours.”