Asha Javeed

Lead Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt

An in­junc­tion grant­ed by the In­dus­tri­al Court to Caribbean Air­lines Ltd (CAL) to or­der pi­lots to work af­ter a sick­out from Au­gust 18-20, has been ex­tend­ed to No­vem­ber.

On Au­gust 21 at 1 am, CAL was grant­ed an in­junc­tion by the In­dus­tri­al Court and the pi­lot’s union, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Pi­lots As­so­ci­a­tion (TTAL­PA) was in­struct­ed to di­rect work­ers/em­ploy­ees to im­me­di­ate­ly re­port to du­ty.

The in­junc­tion was in force un­til Sep­tem­ber 28.

At a news con­fer­ence on Au­gust 24, CAL’s chief ex­ec­u­tive Garvin Med­era said the in­junc­tion was to put a stop to the in­con­ve­nience which the air­line faced.

The Guardian un­der­stands that the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s of­fice has now joined the mat­ter and, as a re­sult, the in­junc­tion has been ex­tend­ed un­til No­vem­ber 10.

Dionne Ligoure, head of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions at CAL, yes­ter­day made clear that the ex­ten­sion of the in­junc­tion was not due to any ac­tion on the part of the air­line.

For the pe­ri­od Au­gust 18-20, 93 pi­lots at CAL called in sick which caused 60 flights to be can­celled and cost the com­pa­ny an es­ti­mat­ed $15 mil­lion.

For its part, the pi­lots’ union has main­tained that no in­dus­tri­al ac­tion took place.

Mean­while, TTAL­PA has writ­ten to Fran­cis Reg­is, the di­rec­tor gen­er­al of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty (CAA), seek­ing his guid­ance on how to deal with pi­lots who call in sick now that the court has de­ter­mined that the sick­out amount­ed to in­dus­tri­al ac­tion.

The let­ter said while TTAL­PA has com­plied with the in­junc­tion, it was deeply con­cerned for the po­ten­tial im­pact to the safe­ty of CAL’s op­er­a­tion and wished to en­sure there is no con­fu­sion for pi­lots.

At the news con­fer­ence, Med­era said the com­pa­ny was on a path to prof­itabil­i­ty af­ter be­ing in sur­vival mode dur­ing the COVID pe­ri­od, with a view to pub­lish­ing fi­nan­cial state­ments by ear­ly 2024, but the sick­out ac­tion cost it mil­lions in loss­es and hurt its rep­u­ta­tion.

CAL is now sort­ing out com­pen­sa­tion for its cus­tomers for the pe­ri­od.

This all hap­pened be­cause CAL and TTAL­PA are in dis­agree­ment over pi­lots’ new com­pen­sa­tion pack­ages. TTAL­PA rep­re­sents 200 of CAL’s 217 pi­lots.

Guardian Me­dia has re­port­ed that the air­line’s of­fer of a 7.5 per cent pay in­crease- 0 per cent, 2.5 per cent, 2.5 per cent, 2.5 per cent and 0 per cent, for the pe­ri­od 2015-2020, cou­pled with a shift from a month­ly to an hourly pay­ment sys­tem, was be­ing re­sist­ed by the pi­lots.

In turn, TTAL­PA’s counter-pro­pos­al is 10 per cent, com­pris­ing 0 per cent, 3 per cent, 3 per cent, 3 per cent and 1 per cent for the pe­ri­od 2015 to 2020.

CAL has al­so pro­posed to tran­si­tion pi­lots from a month­ly salary sys­tem to an hourly rate pay­ment struc­ture across all fleets, cou­pled with a re­duc­tion in the min­i­mum work guar­an­tee from 75 to 60 hours with over­time rates ap­plied af­ter 75 hours.

TTAL­PA made a re­duced coun­terof­fer of 0 per cent, 3 per cent, 3 per cent, 3 per cent and 1 per cent to CAL.