Prime Minister feels hurt by LIAT sickout
This countryâs Prime Minister says that he feels personally hurt by what took place with LIAT on Wednesday, when a sickout by 24 flight attendants grounded 34 flights and led to long delays with others.{{more}}
Dr Ralph Gonsalves, who has been very aggressive in his support for LIAT, said that while he is not putting blame on any one, âIt is evident that there is a serious problem in the Industrial Relations system in LIAT, for differences that exist not to be settled in existing proceduresâ.
Dr Gonsalves said that in the past, pilots and flight attendants have not hesitated to contact him when the future of the airline was in doubt, âasking me to please save their jobs.â He said that he found it disappointing that if the Industrial Relations machinery was failing, that the flight attendants couldnât forward a document to him or any of the other shareholding countriesâ Prime Ministers, asking for their intervention.
He said that the action taken in such a peak period wasnât proportionate, a view he believes would be shared by âmost reasonable persons.â
âAfter the long struggle to make LIAT survive, and for us to have managed to put it in the sky, and make it capitalized …to have success, the problem canât be of such a nature that it canât be settled by dialogue,â a disappointed Dr Gonsalves said.
âStanford was not able to close us, but 24 flight attendants did,â Dr Gonsalves said.
LIATâs management Wednesday described the sickout by the flight attendants as being âcompletely unjustified.â
Chief Executive Officer Mark Darby is reported as saying that no official reason has been given for the action staged by the flight attendants who called in sick.
âWe do have the support of our shareholder governments to take strong action on this. They are very, very upset and theyâve asked me to convey the strength of their feeling about this action,â Darby said.
In addressing speculation that the flight attendants were upset about contract crews being paid at a higher rate to cover additional flights, Darby noted that the practice is not unusual.
âWeâve hired a small group of contract crews just to help us with the Christmas period to make sure that we had enough crew to mount the operation, and we discussed that with the flight attendantsâ association (Leeward Islands Flight Attendants Association) and weâve reached an agreement with them.
âAs far as weâre concerned, thereâs nothing that should have provoked this action and certainly weâve not been made aware of any particular action that should have resulted in this today,â Darby said.
Meanwhile, Dr Gonsalves told SEARCHLIGHT that he has been told that things should have been back to normal yesterday.
He said that he plans to stay on top of the situation.