No Delay Says LIAT

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Business News

Tuesday, 06 October 2009 09:08

By Afeefah Beharry

The management of regional air carrier LIAT is refuting claims that it is delaying a three-member arbitration panel from investigating the industrial dispute involving the Leeward Islands Airline Pilots’ Association (LIALPA).

Acting Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Brian Challenger, in a memo to staff, said while some may be of the view that the airline’s management is deliberately “stalling or delaying” the arbitration process, nothing could be further from the truth.

Caribarena obtained a copy of the memo.

Challenger said that since the appointment of the arbitration team, the chairman has requested that the parties submit and exchange their list of issues for arbitration.

According to Challenger, LIAT has submitted and exchanged its list to the parties involved.

In July, shareholder governments Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, and St Vincent and the Grenadines agreed to send the protracted industrial dispute to arbitration for settlement by September 30.

Since then, no hearings have started.

Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines Ralph Gonsalves had announced that retired Barbadian jurist Leroy Inniss, QC would chair the arbitration panel, with management and the pilots each appointing a representative.

He said the panel would devise its own programme within the framework of the laws of Antigua and Barbuda, where the airline is headquartered, and there would be a final report by the panel “on or before 30 September.”

Gonsalves noted that while the panel is adjudicating, the two sides have agreed to revert to the situation that existed before the airline was granted an injunction by the Industrial Court in Antigua to prevent the pilots from taking industrial action.

He said the new environment would also bring an end to “whatever form of industrial action the pilots would have taken,” adding, “I am not saying that the pilots took industrial action, but whatever form they may have taken, those will no longer be in existence.”

 

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