BWIA shows plans to SEC BY JUHEL BROWNE Trinidad Guardian Four days before it must begin saving US$1.4 million a month, BWIA submitted some of the figures for its 2003 profit-making plans to the Securities and Exchange Commission, an airline official said yesterday. The move was in preparation for today's meeting between the BWIA management and the four trade unions which represent the airline's employees. Representatives of the Aviation Communications and Allied Workers' Union, Trinidad and Tobago Airline Pilots' Association, the Communication, Transport and General Workers' Trade Union and the Airline Superintendents' Association will hold a news conference this afternoon after the meeting. They were supposed to meet with the BWIA management yesterday, but a confidentiality agreement, stipulated by BWIA management, got in the way. "The unions did not sign the confidentiality agreement so we could not have the meeting," said BWIA corporate communications director Clint Williams. "The reason for the confidentiality clause in the first place is that our activities are bounded by the SEC. There are some figures the SEC must see before they are made public. It would have been illegal for us if some of those figures went public before the SEC saw it." In a letter written on January 14, obtained by the Guardian, BWIA vice president of employee services Frank Sampson explained why the confidentiality clause was necessary. "The plan and our presentation to ACAWU and the other unions do contain confidential, financial and strategic information with serious legal obligations with respect to disclosure," Sampson wrote. The unions have said they will not sign any concession agreement without seeing the BWIA executive's recovery plans for 2003. On January 6, BWIA chief executive officer Conrad Aleong promised the airline's shareholders and employees it will make a profit this year, despite global projections of a recovery for the airline industry next year. *************************************************** The owner of Roger's Trinbago Site/TnTisland.com Roj (Roger James) escape email mailto:ejames@escape.ca Trinbago site: www.tntisland.com Carib Brass Ctn site www.tntisland.com/caribbeanbrassconnection/ Steel Expressions www.mts.net/~ejames/se/ Site of the Week: www.pichemas.com TnT Webdirectory: http://search.co.tt *********************************************************