Unions accused BWIA of pleasing shareholders By Orion Ganase, Trinidad Express BWIA unions yesterday accused the airline's management of cutting workers jobs to placate shareholders. "They have put people on the breadline in order to please the shareholders," President of Allied Communications Aviation Workers Union (ACAWU), Jagroop Jagdeo told the Express yesterday after the announcement of BWIA's "New Business Model" for 2003. "The developmental aspect of people has not really been factored in....you out source everything in order to record a profit at the expense of trained qualified people?" Jagdeo said. Jagdeo also said the only thing concrete in the model is the retrenchment of workers. "Everything else is just promises and projections," he said. Christopher Abraham, president of ACAWU said management had planned to cut staff as early as last year. "This plan is just a bunch of figures, what they did was in the making for a long time. In June 2002 (Conrad) Aleong signed a US$22 million maintenance contract with a Canadian company," Abraham said. "And the accountants have made provisions for the retrenchment of workers in last year's accounts." Minutes after meeting with BWIA's management representatives from the airline's three unions ACAWU, CATTU and Talpa held a press conference at the Seamen and Waterfront Workers Trade Union building in Port of Spain. Jagroop complained that the airline had presented these staff cuts to the unions without a formal cost saving plan and said that they were not given sufficient time to make savings suggestions. Jagroop said he expected "One of the areas that is going to be very hard hit is the maintenance area, because the CEO did tell us that all the heavy maintenance on the aircraft we operate is going to be out-sourced," said Jagroop. This means that the airline will do its refueling and minor repairs in Trinidad while all major repair work will take place overseas. President of TALPA, Capt Simon Kelshall said he was worried the massive out-sourcing will negatively affect BWIA's high safety standards. "One of the things that BWIA has been famous for over the years is its safety standards," he said. He said he was concerned as to who is in charge of quality control and how do they enforce the adherence to BWIA's very strict standards." *************************************************** 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 *********************************************************