LIAT: Job cuts begin in bid to return carrier to profitability

Regional carrier Leeward Islands Air Transport (LIAT) is offering employees voluntary separation and early retirement packages as it moves to reduce its wage bill.

The offer to full-time, permanent employees who have no disciplinary action pending against them and have been employed for more than 6 years, comes less than 3 months after shareholder governments agreed on a plan to send home 180 workers.

The Antigua & Barbuda-based carrier said downsizing was the only way to ensure its survival. “We must remove the costs that we were carrying as a larger entity. The company wishes to avoid having to impose compulsory redundancies in order to achieve this,” stated the offer document signed by Director of Human Resources Ilean Ramsey.

However, LIAT said if it did not have enough workers opting for either voluntary separation or early retirement, it would have to go the route of redundancy.

Interested employees have until 4 p.m. (EDT) on May 19 to submit their applications.

According to the Antigua Observer, veteran trade unionist Stafford Joseph has advised LIAT workers interested in parting ways with the company to negotiate for more benefits than stipulated under the Labor Code.

“Things are hard now and work is hard to get,” he told reporters, contending that workers could “easily negotiate a 6 month or year’s salary” in addition to what is legally owed to them.

Following meetings on February 14 at the Hilton Barbados, attended by Barbados’ Prime Minister Freundel Stuart, St Vincent & the Grenadines’ Ralph Gonsalves, Dominica’s Roosevelt Skerrit and Antigua & Barbuda’s Minister of Public Utilities, Civil Aviation and Transportation Robin Yearwood, as well as LIAT officials, a plan to return LIAT to profitability was outlined.

It involved reducing staff numbers and shifting LIAT’s fleet base to Barbados, both of which have subsequently been resisted by Antigua & Barbuda’s Prime Minister Gaston Browne. -(CMC)