David Massiah, general secretary of the Antigua Barbuda Workers Union ABWU (file photo)
General Secretary of the Antigua and Barbuda Workers’ Union (ABWU), David Massiah called for the removal of the management of the struggling regional airline, LIAT.
Massiah made the comments at the Trade Union Congress on Monday, stating that since the government is leading the discussions to keep LIAT alive, it was imperative that the current management of LIAT be removed.
“We ask that the government ensure that, in taking the lead in this LIAT arrangement, that before we go [anywhere] that the entire management has to go,” he said.
Massiah cited, as his reasons for the declaration, the continual insistence by the management at LIAT that staff take a pay cut, despite the continual financial support by shareholder governments.
“The shareholder governments continue to give money to LIAT. Yet, every year that money goes in, they are calling on the workers to make sacrifices, to take a pay cut while the management continue to sit pretty,” he said.
Massiah added that LIAT has had major errors in its recent past without any manager being held accountable or fired for it.
“Some years ago, they had a fire at LIAT- aircraft destroyed, maintenance information destroyed. But not one manager lost their job,” he said, adding that in any good airline, there would have been a backup of the files that were destroyed.https://antiguaobserver.com/axe-liat-management-union-official-says/