A dig­i­tal bill­board in Port-of-Spain is now fea­tur­ing an ad urg­ing Caribbean Air­lines Lim­it­ed (CAL) to re­solve out­stand­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions with its pi­lots.

This fol­lows a sim­i­lar bill­board dis­played at BWIA Boule­vard, Pi­ar­co, as pres­sure con­tin­ues to mount on the air­line amid on­go­ing dis­cus­sions with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Air­line Pi­lots’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTAL­PA).

This is the sec­ond bill­board call­ing on CAL to ac­cept the four per cent wage in­crease ap­proved by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert in Oc­to­ber of last year.

Fol­low­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence held by TTAL­PA on Thurs­day, CAL is­sued a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day reaf­firm­ing its com­mit­ment to fair and trans­par­ent ne­go­ti­a­tions with the pi­lots’ as­so­ci­a­tion.

CAL’s head of Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Dionne Ligoure, told Guardian Me­dia, “Caribbean Air­lines con­tin­ues to seek a fair and eq­ui­table res­o­lu­tion to the on­go­ing good-faith ne­go­ti­a­tions with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Air­line Pi­lots As­so­ci­a­tion over the terms and con­di­tions of em­ploy­ment for the pi­lots. These salary ne­go­ti­a­tions re­late to ad­di­tion­al in­creas­es for pi­lots for the pe­ri­od 2015 to 2023.”

In De­cem­ber 2024, Caribbean Air­lines and the union suc­cess­ful­ly con­clud­ed ne­go­ti­a­tions on the col­lec­tive agree­ment for the pe­ri­od 2015 to 2020.

As a re­sult, she said the air­line has made pay­ments to the pi­lots to­talling ap­prox­i­mate­ly $14 mil­lion, based on an agreed ad­di­tion­al salary in­crease of four per cent.

She added, “This is in ad­di­tion to the 14.5 per cent av­er­age cu­mu­la­tive in­crease to salaries that pi­lots would have al­ready re­ceived dur­ing that pe­ri­od. With this as­pect of the ne­go­ti­a­tions con­clud­ed the com­pa­ny is quite con­fi­dent that an agree­ment can be reached over ad­di­tion­al in­creas­es for the pe­ri­od 2020 to 2023, and we will con­tin­ue the ne­go­ti­a­tions with the union.”

She con­tin­ued, “The union has pro­vid­ed a pro­pos­al, and that is cur­rent­ly be­ing re­viewed. We tru­ly ac­knowl­edge the con­tri­bu­tion of all Caribbean Air­lines em­ploy­ees, in­clud­ing our ded­i­cat­ed team of pi­lots, and the com­pa­ny is stead­fast in main­tain­ing pos­i­tive and re­spect­ful in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions.”

TTAL­PA is ex­pect­ed to is­sue a state­ment on the mat­ter soon.

The re­la­tion­ship be­tween CAL and its pi­lots has been any­thing but smooth over the years, with on­go­ing dis­putes over wages, work­ing con­di­tions and con­tract ne­go­ti­a­tions cre­at­ing ten­sion be­tween the par­ties.

Back in 2020, pi­lots staged protests over salary re­duc­tions and job se­cu­ri­ty dur­ing the height of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

The air­line faced se­vere fi­nan­cial loss­es and im­ple­ment­ed salary cuts, fur­loughs, and op­er­a­tional changes that pi­lots ar­gued placed an un­fair bur­den on them.

In De­cem­ber 2024, af­ter years of stalled ne­go­ti­a­tions, CAL and TTAL­PA fi­nal­ly reached an agree­ment on the 2015–2020 col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing pe­ri­od, which they say has not yet been ho­n­oured af­ter Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert asked in Oc­to­ber for the mat­ter to be set­tled.