Is the pilot body gaslighting travellers?

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There is a famous book that starts with the sentence: “In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.”

It was written over 2,000 years ago, more or less, by a fisherman called John bar Zebedee, which simply tells you that his father was named Zebedee. The word “bar” in those days meant something different than it does now – some place you go to drink alcohol, or a sandbank, a stripe of colour and at least 40 other meanings.

Likewise, “word” meant different things back in time than it means now.

In the book referred to, which was written in Greek, among other things it signified consciousness. Which makes sense. If there weren’t consciousness, no one would know what “words” meant.

A new development in the industrial relations (IR) vocabulary of TT was coined this past week – at least, it is new in the long and varied use of words assigned to weapons of conflict.

And, as we all know, a single word can change a culture.

My first mentor in the field of industrial conflict, the knowledgeable Isaac Hyatali – one of the very first and wisest judges of the Industrial Court – warned against a casual use of words “expressed or implied, oral or in writing,” as the Industrial Relations Act (IRA) puts it.

He was so right. Over the years I have seen so many misinterpretations of words lead to disputes which in turn lead to violent words and even actions, when words intended to mean something are interpreted as meaning something quite different.

The word “consultation,” for example: does it mean to discuss and listen to another’s point of view? Or does it mean agreement about what we talked about?

Does equity mean “equality,” or does it mean appropriate allocations of the same benefit to each according to his need, from each according to his ability to give?

Political parties and families have split apart and wars have been fought over that one.

In domestic and intimate relationships, one of the cruellest weapons that one person who wants complete and total control/ power over another can use is something called gaslighting. It comes from a film featuring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer called Gaslighting, in which a husband destroys his wife by persuading her that she is going mad.

Translated into an IR setting in 2023 in TT, it features the general public and all prospective passengers on any Caribbean Airlines flight over the last few days and all connecting flights, when pilots for scheduled flights suddenly called in sick. The action emerged amid wage negotiations.

Hundreds of people wanting to go home; to Tobago; students hoping to begin their university studies with scheduled orientation sessions; patients sent by their doctors for specialist surgical care abroad that is unavailable here – were grounded.

The airline went to the Industrial Court and got an injunction to stop any industrial action “including calling in sick en masse.”

In its official release, TT Airline Pilots Association (TTALPA) rebutted allegations of strike or sickout and said it was unaware of any strike action.

You see, they can’t strike legally, because Eric Williams’ government drafted the law to list commercial airlines as an essential industry, and an essential service, so essential to the economy and security of the newly declared nation of TT that they were not allowed to strike. That is how important a national airline was, and still is. And why pilots traditionally get paid more than even the already most highly paid civil servants.

Legally, your salary is your property. To take it away from you is theft unless you agree. CAL insists the TT Airline Pilots Association (TTALPA, which legally represents the pilots, agree. They haven’t.

It is totally unlikely that no wage negotiations have taken place over the past five years. They have been negotiating; they just have not agreed yet.

Which takes us back to gaslighting. Gaslighting happens when one party takes action and then denies that it is happening. In domestic life it is usually being caught having sexual relations outside of marriage, sometimes
in delicto, or before your very eyes, and, when accused, shouting: “Are you crazy? I never did that!” Or “said that!”

If it is said or done often enough, and loudly enough, the victim, if they have always seen the gaslighter as an authority, a boss or a supporter (husband, lover, teacher, father, political leader etc) may come to think they are imagining things and he (or she) is right. I am told that lawyers are good at that.

It must be dismaying for airline pilots – always looked up to, among the most elite professionals in our work force, paid on an equal level to their professional cohorts abroad – to be asked to take a salary cut when their last negotiated raise was in 2015.

They belong to the International Pilots Association, which they know will support them, even possibly to the extent of staging an international “sympathy strike” causing billions of dollars and disrupting commerce worldwide, and in the process destroying TT’s economy and possibly cancelling, what is it they are called? Landing rights? For good?