The pilots of the Air Antilles and Air Guyane companies are called to strike from July 14 to 19, their union accusing the management of “non-respect of the word given” after a first conflict last December.
Announced in the middle of the summer holidays, the news is enough to worry some users who were planning to take the plane in mid-July to connect Guyana and Guadeloupe or Martinique. The union of airline pilots from Air Antilles and Air Guyane has indeed filed a strike notice from July 14 to 19.
Air Antilles and Air Guyane are subsidiaries of the Interregional Express Airline (Cairo), based in Guyana. They provide mainly regional connections between overseas territories but also with third countries in the Caribbean region.
The Cairo Section of the National Union of Airline Pilots (SNPL)”have been asking for many months that a real social dialogue be set up within their airline“, argued the SNPL in a press release. The union recalled that a social conflict had already broken out last December on the question of wages.
To get out of it,the company had committed, by agreement, to wage increases pending negotiations which had to respect a very precise timetable to finally reach a collective pilot agreement“.
Gold, “all the commitments made have not been respected“, affirmed the SNPL, stressing that “management unilaterally terminated almost three years ago the only existing pilot agreement, thus nullifying the few hard-earned ‘benefits’“.
“The questioning without discussion of the working conditions of the pilots, and in particular the uncertainties relating to their remuneration, which, let us not forget, are among the lowest on the market, place them in complicated and often precarious situations, not to mention of the inflationary context“, completed the union.
The SNPL, threatening to extend the strike notice beyond July 19, claims “in addition to the establishment of a real social dialogue and respect for employees and their representatives, the immediate implementation of an advantageous pilot agreement incorporating a significant increase in remuneration respectful of the unfailing commitment of flight crews for so many years“.
