Pilots press Govt for outstanding $20M payout ahead of budget

An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­[email protected]

With six days to go be­fore Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo presents Gov­ern­ment’s sec­ond an­nu­al bud­get, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Air­line Pi­lots’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTAL­PA) is de­mand­ing pay­ment of more than $20 mil­lion owed to its mem­bers.

Op­ti­mistic that pi­lots will re­ceive at least part of the out­stand­ing sum, which cov­ers two col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing pe­ri­ods from 2015-2020 and 2020-2023, TTAL­PA chair­man Ja­son Wick­ham yes­ter­day said the claim was straight­for­ward.

“The work has al­ready been done,” he said, in­sist­ing pi­lots were sim­ply seek­ing pay­ment for ser­vices ren­dered.

Speak­ing dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the Nor­mandie Ho­tel, St Ann’s, Wick­ham said TTAL­PA had wait­ed longer than sev­er­al trade unions whose mem­bers re­ceived pay­ments over the past 17 months.

He said three let­ters had been sent to Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion Min­is­ter Eli Za­k­our, the most re­cent over a month ago, along with pre­vi­ous cor­re­spon­dence to for­mer line min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo. De­spite this, he said, pi­lots were still wait­ing near­ly two years af­ter a set­tle­ment had been ap­proved.

Wick­ham said TTAL­PA had agreed on three oc­ca­sions to de­fer pay­ments to ac­com­mo­date Caribbean Air­lines.

“In the in­ter­est of good faith and in an ef­fort to fa­cil­i­tate the com­pa­ny’s cir­cum­stances, TTAL­PA agreed on each oc­ca­sion to re­vised pay­ment arrange­ments. Those agreed pay­ment sched­ules have come and gone,” he said.

Wick­ham and in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions con­sul­tant Tim­o­thy Bai­ley ac­cused Caribbean Air­lines’ man­age­ment of at­tempt­ing to side­line the union by dis­re­gard­ing es­tab­lished in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions prin­ci­ples, aban­don­ing com­mit­ments made by for­mer ex­ec­u­tives and main­tain­ing what they de­scribed as a wall of si­lence.

Ac­cord­ing to Wick­ham, Za­k­our ad­vised the union that he would seek the nec­es­sary ap­provals to set­tle the out­stand­ing pay­ments but the union is still await­ing a re­sponse.

Be­yond the un­paid set­tle­ment, the union al­so raised con­cerns over the uni­lat­er­al sus­pen­sion of ear­ly re­tire­ment ac­cess, which Wick­ham said had sig­nif­i­cant­ly af­fect­ed pi­lots and their liveli­hoods.

Wick­ham al­so crit­i­cised the air­line’s gov­er­nance prac­tices, claim­ing TTAL­PA was not in­vit­ed to a re­cent AGM and that the cur­rent board had yet to pro­vide au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments.

De­scrib­ing the sit­u­a­tion as “whol­ly dis­re­spect­ful”, he said pi­lots were cen­tral to the air­line’s op­er­a­tions and de­served trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty and mean­ing­ful en­gage­ment.

The union al­so re­newed con­cerns over the re­moval of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 6,000 va­ca­tion days from pi­lots dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, say­ing mem­bers have still been un­able to ac­cess those ben­e­fits.

Wick­ham not­ed that pi­lots played a key role in help­ing the air­line sur­vive the 2020 shut­down, agree­ing to a 57 per cent salary re­duc­tion to help CAL achieve tar­get­ed sav­ings and avoid re­trench­ment. He said ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment faced salary cuts of be­tween five and ten per cent dur­ing the same pe­ri­od.

He claimed that when back­pay cov­er­ing the 2020-2023 pe­ri­od was even­tu­al­ly dis­trib­uted, it was sub­ject­ed to the same 57 per cent re­duc­tion.

Wick­ham de­scribed the move as “dou­ble dip­ping,” ar­gu­ing that pi­lots ef­fec­tive­ly suf­fered a 114 per cent loss and the arrange­ment was nev­er con­tem­plat­ed by the union. De­spite the sac­ri­fices, he said about 60 pi­lots were still re­trenched, al­though they were lat­er re­hired.

With the mat­ter now be­fore the courts, Wick­ham asked: “How much more are pi­lots ex­pect­ed to sac­ri­fice?”

He said pi­lots had re­mained dis­ci­plined through­out the dis­pute and con­tin­ued to re­port for du­ty de­spite mount­ing frus­tra­tions.

Point­ing to re­cent state­ments by CAL re­gard­ing in­creased flights and pas­sen­ger traf­fic to To­ba­go, Wick­ham said, “Who is mak­ing that growth pos­si­ble?” he asked. It is our pi­lots. The pi­lots who are con­tribut­ing to that growth are the very same pi­lots who are wait­ing on mil­lions of dol­lars owed to them.”

The union al­so raised con­cerns about in­ad­e­quate in­sur­ance cov­er­age for lo­cal pi­lots on over­seas lay­overs. Wick­ham and Bai­ley said the is­sue came in­to fo­cus af­ter a pi­lot was left fac­ing sig­nif­i­cant med­ical ex­pens­es fol­low­ing an ill­ness while on of­fi­cial du­ty abroad.

They ar­gued that the mat­ter re­quired ur­gent at­ten­tion.

Asked whether pi­lots in­tend­ed to take in­dus­tri­al ac­tion and whether op­er­a­tions could be af­fect­ed ahead of To­ba­go Car­ni­val at the end of Oc­to­ber, Bai­ley not­ed that pi­lots were re­strict­ed from tak­ing such ac­tion. How­ev­er, he ac­knowl­edged con­cerns over burnout, fa­tigue and ill­ness.

“We could nev­er pre­dict what hap­pens to­mor­row in terms of seam­less­ness. We leave that to God, but as it stands cur­rent­ly, the pi­lots have been do­ing what they are sup­posed to do and have been re­spon­si­ble about do­ing it,” he said.

Bai­ley al­so point­ed to on­go­ing re­cruit­ment pres­sures, not­ing that rough­ly 60 pi­lots had left CAL over the past decade for bet­ter-pay­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties abroad amid a glob­al pi­lot short­age.

While both men cred­it­ed for­mer act­ing CEO Nir­mala Ra­mai with fos­ter­ing a more con­struc­tive re­la­tion­ship be­tween man­age­ment and the union, Bai­ley said that at­mos­phere had de­te­ri­o­rat­ed un­der the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“We be­lieve we are see­ing signs that the in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions cul­ture is chang­ing for the neg­a­tive in the com­pa­ny,” he said.

“No ex­pan­sion of routes and no growth of the air­line can oc­cur if the en­vi­ron­ment in which we are op­er­at­ing is tox­ic.”