Mesaba Workers Head for the Exits

Trevor Reiten used to tell himself when he fixed a Mesaba Airlines plane that it meant somebody's grandma was going to get home on time.

But the Andover man recently resigned his job as a mechanic at the bankrupt Mesaba to work at an ammunition factory. It doesn't offer the same psychic rewards, but he's happier nonetheless.

"Bankruptcy used to be a tragedy. Now it's just a business tool," said the 38-year-old Reiten.

Mesaba management is embroiled in bitter skirmishes with its unions over proposals to slash labor costs by 19.4 percent at the regional carrier, the only one to serve a number of smaller Midwest cities. If the airline and its unions don't reach new labor agreements by May 11, a bankruptcy judge could allow the carrier to impose pay rates.

While the two sides argue in the courtroom and at the bargaining table, a growing number of Mesaba employees are deciding not to stick around to see how much their wages will be reduced.

Since Mesaba's October bankruptcy filing, 33 technicians have resigned, according to a tally by the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA).

"Nobody has a problem quitting Mesaba right now," said Nathan Winch, a Mesaba AMFA airline representative from the Twin Cities. The only regrets come from employees "leaving their work family."

"It's a pretty tight-knit group. We all know each other's wives' names, we know their children. We're a good group of friends," Winch said. But camaraderie hasn't been enough to stop people from leaving.

Shortly before the bankruptcy, there were 254 Mesaba AMFA employees, including 106 in the Twin Cities, Winch said. Since then, nearly three dozen, or 13 percent, have resigned from Mesaba.

According to the pilots union, the attrition rate for its work group has soared. Nineteen pilots resigned from mid-March to early September in 2005. But 43 pilots quit between last September and mid-March of this year. In the past six weeks, at least 18 pilots resigned, a union official said.

Mesaba has 3,531 employees now, down about 8 percent from 3,823 in September before the bankruptcy filing. The airline has furloughed 219 employees since October.

Elizabeth Costello, a Mesaba spokeswoman, declined to say how many employees have resigned but acknowledged that the carrier "has experienced an expected level of attrition among its employees since its bankruptcy."

"We recognize that employees must make decisions in the best interest of their families and careers," Costello said. "Management must make decisions in the best interest of the company to ensure its survival."

Six-year cutbacks

The airline's executives are trying to lock union employees into six-year concessionary contracts.

"That's pretty much what put me over the edge," said Reiten, who now works at Federal Cartridge in a plant in Anoka.

Reiten was making about $18 an hour at Mesaba, and his gross pay, including overtime, was about $45,000 last year. Rather than stay at Mesaba and take a potential double-digit pay cut, he chose to accept the job at the ammunition plant, which pays somewhat less than he had been making but is just a few miles from his house.

"I think that he feels very valued where he is right now," said Reiten's wife, Bobbie.

Former pilot Ian Spaude has parachuted out of Mesaba and into a chief pilot's job at an air cargo company.

"I took the safest route and jumped for my own well-being," said Spaude, 31.

He flew for Mesaba for eight years and was earning about $53,000 a year. He left Mesaba in March, rather than fly for about $31,000 - or 42 percent less - as Mesaba is proposing.

The airline had 100 planes when it filed for bankruptcy, but its new business plan envisions a fleet of only 49 Saabs, with many pilots, such as Spaude, likely to be downgraded to co-pilot status.

"It is a constant race to the bottom" at many commercial airlines, Spaude said. "The career of the airline pilot ... pretty much died in the `90s for pensions, for compensation, for respect, for quality of living."

Bob Johnston, a mechanic from Apple Valley, ended his nine-year career at Mesaba a week ago, having decided he could no longer deal with the company's financial uncertainty or workplace atmosphere.

"I would still like to be there," he said. But "they've taken a small airline and turned it into big business where everybody is at each other's throats."

He was making $25.05 an hour at Mesaba. Now he'll earn $23 an hour as a service manager at Track Inc. in Bloomington, which maintains and distributes equipment used to groom trails.

Mesaba is a subsidiary of Minneapolis-based MAIR Holdings Inc., a publicly traded company whose chairman is Minnesota Twins owner and billionaire Carl Pohlad. Spaude was among many employees who expressed outrage that Mesaba generated profits for MAIR for years, yet now "we have no access" to MAIR's $115 million in cash and investments.

Mesaba, which operates regional flights for Northwest Airlines, provided $441 million in revenue to MAIR for fiscal 2005 while carrying 5.6 million passengers.

Preview of the future?

In court, union lawyers and witnesses have argued that there will be a mass exodus if the company refuses to soften its demands.

"I am seeing career Mesaba pilots leaving and contemplating leaving, people who were planning on retiring from this carrier," said Tom Wychor, chairman of the Mesaba branch of the Air Line Pilots Association.

Ex-Mesaba pilots recently have landed jobs at Southwest Airlines, JetBlue Airways, Continental Airlines and NetJets, Wychor said.

"The company has lost sight of the value of their employees," he said.

Those who have left Mesaba include the head of the pilots' union air safety committee and the former chairman of the union's negotiating committee.

Pedro Leroux, 26, earned $35,000 last year as a Mesaba pilot. "There's no way I was willing to work for a penny less than I was making," he said. Now he's earning about $46,000 a year for a company that provides fractional ownership of private jets.

"I had no faith in our [Mesaba] management to turn things around," Leroux said.

Dave Moser, 44, called it quits after serving as a Mesaba mechanic for 18 years. "I was fed up with the way the place was operating," he said, citing short-staffing and Mesaba's practice of outsourcing heavy maintenance.

"The overall morale of the place is down so far that it's not a fun place to work anymore," he said.

Moser, who used to work four days a week in the Twin Cities as a lead mechanic, now spends his entire week in tiny Streeter, N.D., dividing his time between fixing cars and trucks and raising cattle on his 320-acre farm.

Angelo Carrillo, a flight attendant for more than six years, also has abandoned aviation. He's working as a physical therapy technician in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

"The gloom-and-doom monkey has left my back," Carrillo said.

Carla Rogat, vice president of the Mesaba branch of the Association of Flight Attendants, said many flight attendants stay at a regional carrier such as Mesaba for one or two years and then leave. In recent months, however, some veteran flight attendants who had stayed loyal to Mesaba have walked away, too.

The union's secretary-treasurer left Mesaba to work at Home Depot.

"He was just tired of it all. He could make more money there," Rogat said. "People just don't want to work for this management team anymore. They just don't trust them."

Liz Fedor - 612-673-7709

BANKRUPTCY DEVELOPMENTS

Oct. 13: Mesaba Airlines files for bankruptcy.

Feb. 3: Mesaba asks the court for permission to void its contracts and impose

pay rates and work rules.

May 11: Mesaba and its three largest unions must reach negotiated agreements by

May 11 or U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Gregory Kishel could allow the airline's

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