This was the ALL-TIME LOW for training contract enforcement. I'm still in awe the company had the balls to try and do this. They did end up retracting the request and not pushing it, but honestly... why even do this in the first place?
But if you want to know how far will a company go to try and enforce one of these... All the way to the bottom.
Good stuff.
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Mesaba bills ex-pilots for training costs
The bankrupt airline is trying to recover training costs from pilots who left before being laid off. The pilots union is outraged.
Liz Fedor, Star Tribune
April 18, 2006
Bankrupt Mesaba Airlines is insisting that first-year pilots, who were earning $21,000 a year, reimburse Mesaba for thousands of dollars in pilot training costs because the pilots left Mesaba shortly before their furlough dates.
An unspecified number of former Mesaba pilots were sent certified letters this month stating they must pay thousands of dollars to Mesaba within 30 days or their pilot-training bills will be turned over to a collection agency.
Tom Wychor, chairman of the Mesaba pilots union, expressed outrage Monday over management's actions. "Financially it's stupid, and morally it's reprehensible," Wychor said in a Star Tribune interview.
In late 2005, many Mesaba pilots were notified that they would be furloughed in January or February as the airline downsized its workforce in bankruptcy. Some of those first-year pilots who were about to lose their jobs at Mesaba found employment with other companies and gave Mesaba two weeks' notice.
But before they began flying for Eagan-based Mesaba, they'd signed training agreements calling for them to remain with the carrier for one year or else they would have to pay back part of their training costs.
Within the past week, union leaders have been contacted by several pilots who got the letters demanding quick repayment. Wychor read from a letter Monday that was sent to a first-year pilot who is ordered to reimburse Mesaba for almost $9,000.
Wychor said that Mesaba management spends about $21,000 per first-year pilot in training costs, and the pilots who received training bills are being directed to pay different amounts on a pro-rated basis. A pilot who flew for the carrier for six months -- and left before the furlough date -- would be billed for more than $10,000 in reimbursement costs.
Wychor, a 17-year Mesaba pilot, said that the payback provision had not been enforced during his tenure with the company. He explained that the language was a safeguard against pilots going through Mesaba's training, flying for the carrier for a few months and then deciding to shift quickly to another airline.
In 2005-06, he said, first-year pilots didn't simply pick up and leave Mesaba -- they resigned because they were about to be furloughed.
Mesaba management has a much different view.
"We are enforcing the provisions of the contract we signed with our pilot employees when they joined the company," Mesaba spokesman Jon Austin said Monday.
Mesaba declined to say how many pilots received the letters. Before Mesaba filed for bankruptcy in October, it had about 850 pilots. Now, the union said, 146 pilots -- the least senior -- are on furlough.
Leaders of the Mesaba branch of the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) expressed strong opposition Monday to management's decision to send training bills to pilots who left the company before their furlough dates. But they also stressed that management has informed them that it "reserves the right" to issue the letters to any pilot who was furloughed but had not completed one year of flying with Mesaba.
"We'd just as soon find a good solution" to this issue, Wychor said. He noted that the repayment topic surfaced in late 2005 and the union discussed it with Ed Davidson, then the vice president of flight operations at Mesaba.
Wychor said that Davidson joined Mesaba in the summer of 2005, and employees were notified in February that Davidson was leaving Mesaba to take an airline job in the United Arab Emirates.
When Davidson was hired by Mesaba, he got a $10,000 signing bonus, Wychor said, yet there is no record of Davidson having to repay it even though he voluntarily left his Mesaba management job in less than a year.
Mesaba's Austin said: "Mr. Davidson's relationship with the company has nothing to do with those contractual obligations between Mesaba and its pilots." Asked directly whether Davidson will have to repay the signing bonus after moving to Dubai, Austin said, "We do not discuss personnel issues as a matter of long-standing policy."
Mesaba is attempting to reduce its labor costs by 19.4 percent and to reach agreements with its unions that last for six years. Today, Mesaba pilot negotiators and management return to the bargaining table, but mediators are being brought in to help jump-start the talks.