Khamal Georges

Caribbean Air­lines ap­pears to be fly­ing in­to some strong head­winds as the air­line warns of tur­bu­lence and pro­pos­es tem­po­rary salary re­duc­tions for all staff be­gin­ning next month to try and stay in the air.

Glob­al­ly it has been a chal­leng­ing pe­ri­od for air­lines with many un­able to sur­vive the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

While Caribbean Air­lines’ has al­so been forced to ground its op­er­a­tions be­cause of bor­der clo­sures, it en­joyed the lux­u­ry of a gov­ern­ment guar­an­tee. Rough­ly US $65 mil­lion.

But that fi­nan­cial back­ing is ex­pir­ing soon and the air­line is now be­ing forced to make de­ci­sions about its ex­pens­es. Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that CAL is look­ing at trim­ming salaries across its op­er­a­tions al­most im­me­di­ate­ly.

Ac­cord­ing to min­utes of a re­cent­ly held meet­ing be­tween the air­line pi­lots as­so­ci­a­tion and Caribbean air­lines, the gov­ern­ment loan guar­an­tee that it re­ceived in May ex­pires at the end of Sep­tem­ber, es­pe­cial­ly as it re­lates to pro­vi­sions for salary sup­port.

The air­line and the gov­ern­ment are now work­ing to­geth­er on de­ter­min­ing the next steps.

Among the pro­pos­als be­ing pre­sent­ed by CAL to work­ers rep­re­sen­ta­tives is a salary re­duc­tion of be­tween 5 and 20 per­cent for all op­er­at­ing staff for a six to eight month pe­ri­od. It is ex­pect­ed the cuts will take place ef­fec­tive next month.

The com­pa­ny is al­so look­ing to de­ter­mine the min­i­mum staffing re­quire­ment to per­form es­sen­tial op­er­a­tions.

There­fore, the re­main­ing mem­bers of staff will be asked to take a leave of ab­sence with­out pay for a pe­ri­od of rough­ly three months in the first in­stance.

A sim­i­lar ap­proach will be tak­en for pi­lots. Once the re­quired num­ber is de­ter­mined, the re­main­ing pi­lots will al­so be giv­en a leave of ab­sence with­out pay. It is ex­pect­ed that 146 pi­lots will be placed on no pay leave in Oc­to­ber. Guardian Me­dia has been told VSEP is not be­ing con­sid­ered.

Sources how­ev­er tell Guardian Me­dia there is a con­cern that the process to be adopt­ed could see the air­line’s most ex­pe­ri­enced pi­lots be­ing sent home.

Ac­cord­ing to the Air­lines Vice Pres­i­dent of Hu­man Re­sources, the aim is to save rough­ly one mil­lion US dol­lars a month.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Caribbean Air­lines met with the Fi­nance Min­istry this week but are await­ing feed­back from the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance.

While the Air­line Pi­lots As­so­ci­a­tion says it is open to some of the rec­om­men­da­tions put for­ward, it says it is con­cerned that the air­line ad­ver­tised the po­si­tion of an ATR pi­lot even as these pro­pos­als were be­ing dis­cussed.

Head of Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions at Caribbean Air­lines Dionne Ligoure told Guardian Me­dia the air­line is in dis­cus­sions with many stake­hold­ers and is work­ing on all op­tions to safe­guard the in­ter­est of the busi­ness. She said those dis­cus­sions are on­go­ing.