Business
Proposal to turn LIAT into essential service mooted in bid to stem industrial action
Earlier this year, the main opposition Antigua Labor Party (ALP) was critical of proposals by two prime ministers from the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) that the aviation industry should be deemed an essential service.
In June, Antigua & Barbuda Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer and his St. Vincent & the Grenadines counterpart, Ralph Gonsalves supported a statement by then LIAT’s chief executive officer, Ian Brunton, that the aviation industry should also be classified as an essential service, with legislated restricted rights to strike.
Brunton said that tourism was the mainstay of the majority of the region’s economies and air services connect the countries of the Caribbean.
Gonsalves said a move to categorize aviation workers as “essential” should not be seen as an attempt to obstruct labor.
The Antigua Labor Party in its objection to the prime ministers proposal said that the proposal was an “attempt to deny workers the right to strike”. It said that Prime Minister Spencer, a former trade unionist, should take note that the LIALPA “has indicated quite clearly that it is not in agreement to designate aviation work as essential”. -(CMC)
