EMPLOYEES RALLY AGAINST TAKEOVER
AERO Organizes Hundreds at IAD in Support of ACA Management and Independence Air
Approximately 350 ACA employees gathered at IAD on Thursday in a rally which voiced resounding support of management and their fight against Jonathan Ornstein’s hostile takeover attempt of ACA. Members of the press, including Washington Post and Bloomberg News reported the event while the WRC-TV Channel 4 helicopter hovered overhead. The message they heard was clear: The employees of ACA are passionate about Independence Air, and they will go to great lengths to fight for it.
Organized not by management, but rather by a group of employees who call themselves AERO, (ACA Employees Repelling Ornstein), the rally attracted people from teams across every ACA workgroup. On Monday, flyers began appearing in IAD, the hangar, headquarters and the Employee Center, and a notice was placed on AERO’s website (
www.AERO2003.org). By Thursday, it was clear to organizers that a great turnout could be expected.
Sure enough, at the appointed time, despite a last-minute change in location, the grassy area on the east side of IAD’s main terminal quickly filled with a rowdy crowd of employees holding professionally-printed signs reading:
Make a Me$$ of Mesa
Mesa = High Fares
Misleading Every Shareholder Again Making Everyone Spend A lot
One creative pilot held aloft a big white pillow imprinted with this message: “MESA POISON PILL: THE ACA EMPLOYEES”.
As travelers, police – even a fire truck – drove by, honking their horns in support of the effort, one employee speaker after another, representing the various workgroups at ACA took to the riser to make their point. As one pilot unequivocally stated, “I want to go on record saying that this group of employees will not cooperate with Jonathan Ornstein, and they will not cooperate with Mesa. Our CEO, Kerry Skeen, has a better vision for air travel and for our employees. We support our management as a company. We support low-cost air travel for the people in Washington, DC. In the summer of 2000 there was one unhappy group of employees at United, and they brought that airline to its knees. This is not a threat. This is not a strike. This is not an illegal work action. It’s just a notification of what an entire company of 4,600 angry employees can and will do.”
EMPLOYEES RALLY AGAINST TAKEOVER 
