‘Gov’t acted too late on severance for LIAT workers’

BARBADOS TODAY: The travesty of justice that is the plight of hundreds of former workers of LIAT drags into 2022, two years after it began to fester. It was triggered in no small part by Barbados’ abrupt withdrawal from a vital but cashstrapped air carrier and fellow shareholder Antigua and Barbuda’s tone-deaf intransigence to these men and women who kept it in the air.

Since April 2020, over 90 per cent of LIAT’s staff have been laid off.

Three months later, the bankrupt airline landed in the hands of the Antiguan High Court which appointed an administrator, mandated the airline’s re-organisation and stayed all proceedings for the company’s liquidation.

Another three months later, the staff was made redundant. Pilots, flight attendants, engineers, ground-support personnel and more were sent home without the severance money to which they are legally and morally entitled.

Salaries and severance entitlements were said to be in excess of over 120 million dollars. They received nothing – not even the empathy, action and diligence of governments that are elected and mandated to uphold and defend workers’ rights, justice and equity.

These empty-handed workers with mortgages to pay and families to support made a desperate plea to the shareholder governments to address their plight.

None was forthcoming.

In May 2021, the Mia Mottley administration provided to Barbadian ex-workers a one-off gift of $2,000 and an advance of $2,000 per month to be recovered from any eventual severance settlement.

Yet again, the former workers approached their former employer seeking to secure what they had earned over the years.

The Gaston Browne administration in St John’s which took over sole control of LIAT then offered their own nationals a one-time “compassionate payment” offer of half their severance in cash, bonds and land. Then late last year it made available two million dollars of the cash portion to the airline’s receiver to distribute to them.

The unions representing the ex-employees have branded the two million dollar payout as Government’s attempts towards “seeking to bribe employees into accepting whatever it has placed on the table with respect to the employees’ entitlements”.

As the new year turned, the chairman of the Leeward Island Pilots Association, Patterson Thompson, disclosed that another last-ditch plea was made to Barbados for an emergency meeting with the other shareholders to conclude a severance pay package for all terminated employees.

The workers, he said, were at their wits’ end.

Thompson told Barbados TODAY: “We are still struggling. All the LIAT workers are 21 months into having no severance at all, no end in sight to the plight. And it is a very difficult time to live. We are struggling. We have no money to retool, we have no money to pay bills, there is no job on the horizon for us, so we are three times worse over than most people.”

To add insult to injury, advertisements this week surfaced in some newspapers across the Eastern Caribbean of job vacancies for “LIAT 2020 Limited”, the successor to LIAT 1974 Ltd.

There are places for a chief executive officer, director of flight operations, chief pilot, captains, flight officers, and flight attendants. The entire range of an airline’s maintenance, engineering, aircraft engineers, ground operations, supervisory and logistical roles was advertised.

The Antigua junior finance minister Lennox Weston confirmed in the media that the ads are authentic. He went on to reveal that LIAT 2020 Limited is expected to fly by June as talks with possible investors continue.

He told Observer Radio Antigua: “We are still in the final stages of negotiations with potential investors. I want to say though that, based on our feasibility studies, if needs be the Antiguan government can finance this airline by itself.”

But what of the former workers who have not received their just due, the ones who actually built this island-hopping carrier.

Weston said if LIAT 1974 Ltd fails to get the investment required then it would be dissolved and the benefits for the workers will be paid from the sale of its assets.

The Antiguan minister added that the best bet for the staff is to accept the government’s offer of a “compassionate” settlement of 50 per cent, payable in cash, lands and bonds.

He declared: “The government has a compassionate offer that is open right now so my recommendation is to take it, and then they should fight for the additional that will come from LIAT dissolution if that happens.

That to me would be the wisest thing to do.”

If this is the attitude to LIAT’s original workers, one wonders what prospects exist for future ones.

It is a shame and disgrace that LIAT’s former employees – skilled and trained Caribbean people in a region of endemic high unemployment – could only be subjected to such disdain from governments that could not sit at the table and act in the service of regional integration and the interest of their citizens.

After years of service, these workers have found themselves on the breadline without the financial buffer they are due by law. But they are somehow expected to get on with their lives.

Look past the knee-jerk derision of the Leave Island Any Time carrier.

The truth is of a carrier that reached the top of one-time performance in the months before ego, brinkmanship, parochialism and political posturing killed it. Look at the mess of airline schedules that remains – with airfares not a penny less than promised. Talk, on the other hand, is plentiful. And cheap.

Justice does not require more rhetoric and recrimination. It certainly must not merely be done but be seen to be done.

For what right has any worker to expect fairness and equity when even a former employer – the lawgiver of the land and guardian of rights – so cavalierly abrogates its obligations to its former workers?

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