LIAT Airline employees all set to start a strike over $120M unpaid salaries

More turbulence looks to be on the way for LIAT, as workers are apparently contemplating a strike that could further destabilise the airline's already precarious financial situation.

According to reports coming out of St Johns, Antigua and Barbuda, workers may take some form of industrial action soon in solidarity with their former employees who are battling for severance pay and other payments promised to them.

Arian Blanchard, a member of the Leeward Island Airline, said on Tuesday that the protest would take place across the LIAT network.

"Right now, our next step is to arrange a demonstration in a few days, which will take place in the LIAT network.  Even though we've all been to hell and back, the unions are together, and the employees are still like family. In the next days, we'll talk more about the protest plans," he said.

Liat Airlines owe more than 120 million dollars to its employees. For almost two years, these workers, numbering around 500, have been at odds with shareholder governments concerning their wages.

Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda Gaston Browne has offered these workers a compassionate payment, but Blanchard claims that "regardless of the fact that he has offered what would be his fair share, which is 35 percent entitlement, which is also equal to 50 percent severance, he is trying to take all of the charter rights for that amount, so this is where we have the issue."

"If he had just offered that amount, I don't think there would have been an issue with the staff taking it," she explained, "but when you say that, you put yourself between a rock and a hard place."

Browne gave out $200,000 in December as part of the compassionate payment, but almost 90% of LIAT workers rejected it.