Mesaba wants low paid employees to take a big cut

[CatholicEdHead]

It is not like Mesaba employees are raking in the cash. Flight attendents after 6 years only make an $10/hr job pay ($21K/yr). Mechanics are only a bit better but not much ($36K/yr) after 6 years.

http://www.startribune.com/535/story/225522.html

"Mesaba flight attendants with six years of experience now earn $21,276 a year. Management wants all flight attendants to take 15.7 percent pay cuts.

In addition to the pay cuts, Mesaba wants its employees to pick up 50 percent of their health care costs.

A six-year mechanic earns $36,447 and is facing a pay cut of 17.8 percent.

"Mesaba's management employees will bear the same 19.4 percent cuts in above-the-line W-2 wages and benefits as other employee groups," Mesaba said Friday. Officers and directors, including Spanjers, will take an 11 percent wage reduction, and other salaried employees will get 7 percent pay cuts. The annual bonus will be cut by 16.4 percent for officers and directors and 51.3 percent for other salaried employees."

[KitchenWitch]

1. I realize this makes way too much sense

But why not eliminate the annual bonus for salaried and executive employees completely, then see if they need to cut payroll expenses.

:grr:

[electron_blue]

2. whoa! I'm soooo not flying anywhere til this is all straightened out

[mn9driver]

3. It gets even better.

When you take the proposed 19 percent pay cuts into account, junior copilots at Mesaba will make the equivalent of $9.24 per hour. I have a friend, recently laid off from Northwest, who interviewed with them. One of the questions thay asked was how he planned on supporting his family while he worked for them. The clear implication was that applying for food stamps or other public assistance would be frowned on, since it would make the company look bad.

After 15 years of training, licensing and experience, he's decided to look for another line of work.

A few years down the road at these pay levels, and most cockpits will be staffed by people who think the equivalent of $10 or $15 bucks an hour is just fine. They will be very young, very inexperienced, with no families and no outside lives. When they want to start a family or get a "real" job, they will leave the business and the next batch of fresh Embry-Riddle graduates will take their place.

Because of the increasing reliability of automated systems in modern aircraft, this will work just fine until a situation arises when in-depth training, experience and acquired skill really counts. Then it won't work fine at all. The Harvard MBA's who infest the front offices of most airlines today could not care less. As far as they are concerned, an accident rate that's too low means they're paying too much for safety. They'll be happy when the rate of passenger and crew fatalities begins to rise a bit. Then they'll know that they've found the optimum compensation level for their employees.

/rant

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

4. What a question! "How will you support your family while you are

working for us?" Well, duh; they -- any employer -- should pay enough for their employees to be able to support their families. Wanna bet that in 10 years there will be a pilot shortage because nobody will want to expend the time, effort and money to be a pilot if they hardly make more than minimum wage?
It's just crazy.