The FAA Follies

On Wednesday, we noted Laura Brown (FAA Deputy Assistant Administrator for Public Affairs) got caught lying to the media (again). At the end of the post, I noted that it’s been the PR attitude like Brown’s that ruins the FAA’s credibility with the public, the media, and its own employees.

This creates bigger problems- stuff like that leads to the wacko 9/11 conspiracy theorists or the chemtrails people running around out there. I think they’re both wrong, but I can’t sit here and expect them to believe the FAA’s PR folks when I know that the PR folks are perfectly willing to lie and have in fact done it plenty of times. It not only leads to the whack jobs having some reason to believe in what they believe in, but it also trashes the agency’s credibility on more realistic issues of aviation safety.

At the end of the post I also mentioned a favorite target of the Follies, Jerry Lavey, the FAA Deputy Assistant Administrator for Corporate Commu. (That’s not a typo; Jerry’s job title is so long that it won’t all fit on his employee information page. I’m going to assume that it’s “Deputy Assistant Administrator for Corporate Communications”, though.)

ANYWAY… I mentioned how keeping Jerry in his job is part of what leads the FAA to be #214 out of 216 in places to work for the federal government. I called him a two-faced jerk, which is a pretty mean thing to say about someone. But here’s the deal… here’s Jerry Lavey in February of 2008, talking about people who send in angry emails to the Focus FAA “Your Two Cents” area…

So, I am sure we’ll hear from you. For those, however, who want to turn this into a mud pie and a personal attack, let me remind you of the distinction that Chris Matthews once made about the difference between the scorched-earth bloggers/email assassins on the one hand, and responsible adults on the other. Matthews said something along the lines of: “Adults have to turn off their computers, take off their pajamas, get dressed, go to work, and actually deal with their adversaries in a quasi civilized manner.”

Lavey’s thrust was that those folks who dared to send in angry emails that used (gasp) bad words, or us blogger types, are just a bunch of losers who should leave the work of the FAA to the growups. (Never mind that the vast majority of those non-managerial employees are, unlike Lavey, actually carrying out the work of the FAA- keeping the skies and flying public and folks on the ground safe.)

But now let’s turn to March of 2009, when Lavey ran a piece including this little insight:

Presumably we were made executives to lead — to make those who work for us successful, and thus make the organization successful. Leadership is not about control or power. In fact, it is not primarily about us at all. It’s about the employees. Until we have that Copernican epiphany, realizing that we are not at the center of this workplace universe, things will probably never change.

Or May of 2009, when we got this:

There’s a lesson for us there. That may sound ironic coming from someone who contributed to the heated rhetoric and the rancor. But, even hot-headed Irishmen can learn the futility of doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. If my people in Ireland could lay down the pitchforks and settle their differences after centuries of strife, there’s a chance it could happen here. But, it must start with each one of us. As Gandhi wisely observed, we each need “to be the change we want to see in the world.”

(That sound you hear is thousands of FAA employees gagging. Sorry, folks.)

So Lavey has shifted fast enough that the suckups that work for him probably all have broken noses right about now. Suddenly, he’s all about working with the employees, listening and settling differences. A year ago he was all about defending the agency’s actions and insisting that they were correct, and that those of us who were disillusioned were merely a small minority of wackos.

Back when people were angry and trying to express it, and more importantly when the FAA’s official line from above was “ignore these people, our cause is righteous and our leaders are doing the correct thing” Lavey didn’t give a tin shit about being “the change we want to see in the world.” He ignored people, belittled them and their thoughts and opinions and points in email, and blew them off publicly.

Then something changed between February of 2008 and now… oh yeah, we elected a new guy and he brought in a new attitude. Suddenly Lavey was spinning around so fast you could hardly follow him.

Look, Jerry… it’s time for you to retire. You’re supposed to be in charge of internal communications, but I’ve heard from multiple people that you have blown them off in email. If it had just been me, well, that’s not a big deal; I’m not easy to deal with sometimes and can rub people the wrong way.

But when it’s repeated, and when it’s a crucial part of your JOB- internal communications- then there’s plainly something wrong. The common factor in all of these separate sets of internal communications is you. You’ve been blowing off bloggers and critics, running quotes comparing them (me! us!) to “crazy people” and suggesting we are just full of “weird thoughts” for years.

By nearly any rational measure, your department is an utter failure. The FAA’s employees continually and repeatedly give the agency incredibly low scores in areas of honesty and openness. These scores and feelings have been displayed in the agency’s own (now-dead) employee attitude surveys, in OPM surveys, and on a growing number of blogs like this one, with hundreds of posts and thousands of comments.

Your editorials have obviously shifted from being pro-control and pro-strong-leadership towards collaboration and cooperation since Obama got elected. It’s about as transparent as the Beatles wrote (albeit in a song about love gone bad):

I’m looking through you, where did you go
I thought I knew you, what did I know
You don’t look different, but you have changed
I’m looking through you, you’re not the same

Your lips are moving, I cannot hear
Your voice is soothing, but the words aren’t clear
You don’t sound different, I’ve learned the game.
I’m looking through you, you’re not the same

You’re transparent, Jerry. You lecture us on how we need to be the change we want to see (which is a pretty Buddhist concept, actually) but you haven’t actually done anything that you profess to be needed. Your rhetoric changes with the breeze and with the perceptions of the people who are your bosses.

You tell us to lay down the pitchforks, but you don’t apologize for your own part in the mess. You tell us how we MUST change things, and say that you were part of the problem, but you don’t actually say what you did or step up to take responsibility.

It’s time for you to go. Leave us, and let us move onward. Let us build a new FAA that actually has open communications with honesty being sent both ways along the organizational chart. Let us accept the newer communication methods like blogging or tweeting or email or online forums or texting, and let us integrate them into the internal conversations that the agency needs.

Let us move on without the leaders who have failed so badly, so repeatedly over the past several years. Own up to it, Jerry. It’s time for you to go. And take Gibson and DuCharme and Day and Johnson with you, would you please? Thanks.

…to hear that Laura Brown, a PR flack for the FAA, has been caught lying to the media.

Again.

And this time she’s got the nerve to not even bother apologizing for it. In fact, she compounds the first lie by claiming that she never said it.

Billy Mays, a TV infomercial star, died the other day. He had been on a flight that had a hard landing (blew out a tire or two) and reported getting whacked in the head with something when that happened. The speculation was that he had a head injury without knowing it and it might have killed him (more on that later).

In a news story appearing on TMZ.com, an “FAA spokesperson” is quoted…

The FAA is already deflecting blame for the death of Billy Mays — claiming the legendary TV pitchman wasn’t wearing a seat belt when he took a shot to the head during a rough landing on a flight he was on yesterday.

…

We called the FAA for comment, and a spokesperson told us, “The passenger needs to wear a seat belt during landing and he didn’t.”

That was June 28th at 12:58pm.

But a couple hours later, TMZ ran this story, which calls the FAA out:

Laura Brown, the FAA spokesperson who gave TMZ this quote about Billy Mays — “The passenger needs to wear a seat belt during landing and he didn’t” — now says she didn’t say it.

She now tells TMZ, “At this point in time, we cannot have any idea who was or wasn’t wearing their seat belt on the plane.”

(boldface added for emphasis- ed)

Now, on the surface, none of this matters very much. A later story has come forth and it appears that Mays’ death had nothing to do with whatever hit him in the head; he didn’t have any head trauma but did have advanced heart disease, which is probably what killed him.

And the point that people should always wear their seatbelts when on a plane, and particularly when landing, is actually a good point.

But Brown’s statement smacks of blame-the-victim. It’s apparently unverified; a couple hours later Ms Brown was backtracking on whether or not the FAA knew if Mays was wearing his seatbelt. To be fair, a PR flack is only as good as the information that they’re given, and it might very well be that Brown was originally told that Mays hadn’t been wearing his seatbelt. For that, we can forgive (but not forget!) the first lie (the statement “he wasn’t wearing his seatbelt”).

The second lie, though, is pretty unforgiveable. It’s dead-spot-on. The media source properly calls her out for it; first she said one thing, then instead of simply correcting the first statement, she claims that she never made it in the first place.

Sorry, Laura Brown, but you need to know that you just can’t keep lying to the media without it being pointed out. Even those media sources that you might not have as much regard for, like the Follies or TMZ.com, will call you on it.

It’s stuff like this that makes me wonder how on earth the FAA’s leaders can possibly underestimate the agency’s credibility problems. They get caught pulling crap like this OVER AND OVER, and then they wonder why people don’t believe anyone working for the FAA!

Laura Brown has done this to me, too. We emailed at one point and she indicated that she wanted to initiate a discussion. I had done a post talking about parallels between the Columbia shuttle disaster and the FAA and I noticed that she had worked for the review board on that accident.

We got to the point where we were going to talk on the phone and… nothing. No return of my calls, no more emails, no nothing. Now, I can see where she might decide that I’m just an angry blogger in my pajamas (like Jerry Lavey compared some email correspondents to when he used a Chris Matthews quote) and it won’t do any good to talk to me. But if that’s the case, why not say so? Why start the discussion at all?

The FAA’s credibility problems, the FAA’s corporate attitude and atmosphere… these things can be traced back to the people who’re running the agency. The FAA was well on its way down the “Best Places To Work in the Federal Government” list before I started this blog, and whether or not I and the other authors write anything here won’t keep the FAA down there.

What will keep the FAA #214 out of 216 is stuff like what Laura Brown pulled with TMZ. Odds are that they taped their conversation with her- but one wonders what it would take for the FAA’s PR department to put a stop to their PR flacks going out there and lying to the media and to the American people?

Letting that stuff go on (like Jim Peters lecturing air traffic controllers about the safety of the public and suggesting we just quit if we don’t like the FAA) or seeing Jerry Lavey continue in his job as head of internal communications when he’s such a two-faced jerk… that’s the stuff that keeps the FAA at the bottom of the list. Check back here on Thursday for a post detailing what I mean.

I’d just as soon avoid discussion of the recently released contract info, for a variety of reasons, but it’s plainly news and therefore deserves comment here.

That said, I’ll say my bit: Whether you wanted the information or not, whether you agreed with the NATCA NEB’s policy about contract information release or not, the reality is this: Pat Forrey, in releasing this information, has effectively declared himself a dictator in our union.

He has placed himself above the policies of the union that were established by the ruling body of the union (the NEB), and whether you agree with his action or not, the reality is that he has apparently decided that the NATCA Constitution doesn’t apply to him; he can do what he sees fit, whether the NEB has set a policy regarding his plans or not.

Pat doing this on the eve of the election and the ballots going out is about as transparent as a sheet of glass, and I’ll risk making some permanent enemies by being totally blunt here: Voting for Pat Forrey is an absolutely terrible idea and encourages hubris, arrogance and disdain for the rule of law.

I urge you to vote for Ruth, but if you’re not going to do that, then vote for Paul… but under no circumstances should you vote for Pat. He has proven that he places his desire for re-election above the Constitution of our union.

It might have looked to many as though the NEB was intentionally trying to tie his hands and screw him over, and that might well be the case- but that is THEIR RIGHT. The NATCA Constitution gives the NEB the right to do that, and Pat ignored the rule of law in our union.

Enough said on that. (I entered this election season intending to keep the above kind of crap out of the blog, and it’s worse than I ever feared… my apologies to the readers.)

Now, on to the contract info that was released. (And yes, I fully appreciate the hypocrisy in talking about it- but I’m also a firm believer that you can only deal with the situation as it is now; trying to live as you wish things were is denying reality.)

It’s not bad.

Of course, the big items- 3 articles dealing with pay, one with annual leave, and one with union representation- aren’t mentioned in Pat’s update. We have no idea what the arbitrators are going to be offered by either side, or where they’ll settle things.

What’s more, there’s a host of articles that aren’t mentioned in Pat’s update. We have no way of knowing whether or not it’s because they have little or no changes, or perhaps they changed but in ways unfavorable to the union’s membership. (It’s stuff like this that is one big reason behind the NEB saying that incomplete info shouldn’t be released; we’re trying to describe an elephant by only feeling its trunk.)

But the stuff that IS released is generally good. I’ll run down some of this stuff here:

Article 7- this is good. It means the FAA has to actually negotiate with its employees at all levels. That’s good; it should lead to them actually listening to their employees (or so we’d hope).

Article 9- the FAA’s utter sham of a grievance procedure has infuriated people for the past few years. This gets it back to where it should be.

Article 13- I wrote a while back about the stupidity of the FAA trying to remove non-FAA computers from facility grounds. This restores some sanity to that episode.

Article 18- a good move for two reasons. First, if someone’s going to be responsible for an entire area or tower, they deserve to get paid more for it. (This might come as a surprise considering what a lousy job I think many managers and supervisors do, but with more responsibility should come more pay.) Second, it’s going to benefit the workforce; with any luck the FAA will follow it up by true cuts in the FLM numbers.

Article 19- Good move. It’s ridiculou for the FAA to expect its employees to risk their lives coming to work during hazardous weather. Now maybe we can get them to rehire the proby they fired who couldn’t make it in on a day the agency wound up letting people go on “snow leave”.

Article 25- another good move. They have to actually warn you before they try and stop you from using sick leave.

Article 26- good. The FAA’s policies had shifted away from being employee-friendly, and this move should help.

Article 28- this is a big deal. The FAA never really did have any numbers showing that on some holidays they could/should reduce staffing; now they have to live up to that.

Article 29- more good moves. Reasonable amounts of time for graduates of the OKC academy to move to their facilities, official time for a huge safety seminar that NATCA puts on, and so forth.

Article 32- I’m not so sure about this one. The proof will be in how the negotiations go. If the FAA’s facility managers can keep those busybody nitwits in charge of HR out of it, things will likely be good; if the HR people dick things up like they have the past few years, this could be ugly.

Article 33 is just common sense. Yes, that’s been lacking in the FAA.

Article 34 seems to be a waste; what good is the right to negotiate AWS if there’s not enough people?

Article 38 is a return to justice. If the FAA forces you to come in on your day off, they gotta give you the full 8 hours of overtime. They’re no longer allowed to trash your day off with a single hour of work. Common sense again, but still…

That’s it for now, I’m beat and need to hit the sack. More later today, maybe…

I’m working on some changes to the Follies. Since I’ve posted less lately, and since the FAA just *might* be moving towards turning things around, I’d like to make the Follies more of a central location for finding all the other blogs on the agency. We’ll still crank stuff out, but some of the other writers are doing tremendous work talking about what’s going on in the FAA and deserve more readers.

The big change, though, starting now, is that I’m trying out a new commenting system. I guarantee that some of you are going to hate it. In fact, many of you will probably hate it. The commenting system is called “Intense Debate”, which is pretty spot-on for air traffic controllers. There’s also a lot of reasons to love it.

The biggest reason people won’t like it is this: I’m going to require people to log in under the same username all the time. To comment, you’ll have to sign up with Intense Debate. That kind of sucks but I’ve been having some issues lately with losers who are posting under names and nicknames that are identified with other people, pretending to be someone else. Blech.

Please note- this does NOT mean you are no longer anonymous. You still are, if you so choose. You can sign up for an Intense Debate account and use any name or nickname you want. The point is that to leave a comment on THIS blog, you’ll have to be signed up and logged in under that Intense Debate account name.

The new commenting system has some great benefits. While the whole signup-and-login thing will be a pain at first, being able to always use the same identity means that you can build a true reputation. There’s a method for voting on comments, so as our regulars build up their ratings you will be able to see who tends to leave good comments and who’s just trolling to try and get people fired up.

Comments are also now “threaded”, meaning if you want to reply to a specific comment and have a conversation, you can do so. It’s a lot easier to follow the flow of what comment someone is replying to this way.

In the comments, you can use some HTML codes, too. Say you want to quote someone; you can use “< blockquote>” before and “< /blockquote>” after the text from their comment that you cut-and-paste, and boom, it appears as a quote in your comment. (Only you wouldn’t have a space between the “<” symbol and the word “blockquote” or the slash to close the tag.)
Trust me, this isn’t as bad as it sounds. It’ll make the comment section a lot better.

BUT… like I said, change is difficult and we’ll all have times when we hate this. For now, let’s just struggle on through and hope that it works out. If it goes down in a giant ball of flames, well… at least we were willing to try something new!

The FAA’s managerial types have a program called “Leading Edge”. It’s supposed to be part of their movement to keep improving the FAA. Of course, if they keep doing the same kind of stuff they’ve been doing, they’ve only got a couple more slots to fall before the FAA is officially the worst place to work in the federal government (see this post).

Anyway, one of the parts of “Leading Edge” is a blog. (Bastards stole my idea!) From back on May 5th, 2009, here’s a posting on their blog:

Starting off the morning Sr. VP for Strategy and Performance John Pipes clarified the misleading information regarding Jane Garvey being the lead mediator for talks with NATCA. She will organize and assist in setting up the talks, but experienced professional mediators will be used. All details have not been finalized. Open communication is the only way for us to become one ATO. Thanks Mr. Pipes.

John Pipes is known to be one of the type of managers that’s “led” the FAA to a point where it’s #214 out of 216 to work for. Here, he demonstrates perfectly what a lying liar he is.

Here’s the FAA’s OWN press release on the whole topic of mediation/arbitration, two weeks later:

May 20 – Mediation aimed at ending an ongoing contract dispute between the FAA and the National Air Traffic Controllers Association began Monday.

The agency and controllers union signed a process agreement May 18 to move the negotiations forward as planned. The agreement provides for extensive mediation sessions and for binding resolution of any unresolved issues, guaranteeing a new collective bargaining agreement between the parties.

Former FAA Administrator Jane Garvey leads the mediation as part of a three-member panel that also includes mediators Richard Bloch and George Cohen, who have extensive experience in mediating high profile disputes.

It is expected that the expedited mediation process will continue through early June 2009. At the request of the mediators, and as is customary with all mediation processes, the details will remain confidential until the process reaches its conclusion, although the mediators will release updates to the parties during the process.

In other words, John Pipes, Sr. VP for Strategy and Performance, was talking right out of his ass.

Now, to be fair, maybe the Senior VP for Strategy and Performance just had it wrong. Maybe someone overruled him after he “clarified” things. Maybe he’s not nearly as in charge as he thinks he is, and an even more senior person (who’s senior to the senior vice president? Does the FAA have a “super-senior vice president”?) changed the plan up. Which, no doubt, drove Senior Vice President for Strategy and Performance John Pipes nuts.

Or maybe, just maybe, the reason Pipes was telling a bunch of managers that Jane Garvey wasn’t going to be one of the mediators/arbitrators was because the group was/is freaked out by the idea. They can’t stand the notion that the former FAA Administrator, who actually worked WITH the agency’s employees and tried to listen to them and use them as a good resource, might actually be in charge of the agency’s fate in any way.

Too bad, guys.

I especially love the little bit at the end of their blog posting: “Open communication is the only way for us to become one ATO.” (How many ATOs are there right now? Can I get a transfer to the one that doesn’t suck?)

Here’s a little open communication for you, Senior Vice President for Strategy and Communications John Pipes: Were you lying when you said Jane Garvey wouldn’t be one of the mediators? Or is the FAA’s press release lying? Or were you, the guy who’s supposed to be in charge of strategy, overruled?

Because that’s pretty much the only three options I can figure. Or maybe… maybe you weren’t really lying, but you just didn’t know what you were talking about. I suppose that’s a fourth option.

In any case, Ms Garvey will be sitting in judgement of the same FAA that she left in pretty good shape… and which Marion Blakey and Bobby Sturgell did their best to ruin in the past several years when she heads the arbitration panel on Monday (June 29).

Personally, I think you have to like NATCA’s chances in that. Knock ‘em dead, guys… or, like we say in the Brougham End of Qwest Field during Sounders games…

TAKE ‘EM ALL!!!

Hey, let me make a pitch for you to go and visit a NATCA election related web site.

Mike Esau dreamed up some questions for the candidates and submitted them. He’s gotten responses from both of the EVP candidates and from Ruth for the Presidential candidates; Paul and Pat have told him they’re going to answer, although they’ve both apparently been kind of busy and haven’t gotten him the responses yet. (For that matter, not all of the candidates that HAVE answered have been able to get to all of the questions- they went out as a couple of different batches, so that makes sense.)

Anyway, I suggest you check it out. They’re interesting questions, centering around NATCA’s finances, and the candidates have taken the time to answer them.

You can see his site at http://natcabu.blogspot.com/

Hopefully in the future we’re able to harness the power of the internet to make our elections less taxing on the candidates and more informative to the voters; the travel schedule these candidates wind up on is utterly ridiculous.

President Obama has come out strongly in favor of a political position… he supports a playoff system to decide the college football champion.

I’ve always been of mixed feelings about this. As a resident of the Seattle area, growing up I watched the University of Washington Huskies in some of their glory years. And it was always frustrating that the big name schools were so much in the driver’s seat when it came to the national championship rankings. I think that there’s been a number of years when schools like BYU or Boise State have had teams that were quite strong and might have been able to win it all in a playoff system.

But I also think it’s really fun, a big part of being a sports fan, to be able to sit around and argue/discuss with your pals about which team really IS “Number 1!!!!”

When you see sports events, you often see fans of the team with those giant foam fingers. “We’re #1! We’re #1!!!” Until March Madness is complete, any of the top basketball programs can think of themselves as the best in the land. Until the BCS is done, any of the top football programs can claim that their guys are the best. People can take pride in claiming that their guys, their team, is the best.

Well, in the world of federal agencies, the FAA doesn’t have anyone at all walking around with a giant foam finger. Actually, some employees might feel like raising a giant foam finger to the FAA’s leaders, but it’s much more likely to be the middle finger.

In the annual “Best Places To Work In The Federal Government” rankings, done by the Partnership for Public Service and American University’s Institute for the Study of Public Policy Implementation, the FAA scored #214 out of 216 federal agencies. We’re not only not #1; we’re absolutely pathetic.

Over the past several years, the FAA’s top leadership has been busy trying to convince everyone of what a great place the FAA is to work. They’ve been busy with seminars and programs and stuff like the ATO’s “Leading Edge” program… and in the meanwhile, the numbers show that the FAA has gone downhill.

In the study that these numbers are based on, based on data from the Office of Personnel Management’s Federal Human Capital Survey, the FAA is an exception to the general rule of thumb. Most agencies have actually been improving their scores; the FAA’s scores have pretty consistently fallen across the board. From the press release announcing the study:

Washington, D.C. – The 2009 Best Places to Work in the Federal Government rankings released today evaluate employee satisfaction across government in 278 federal agencies and subcomponents. Overall, employee satisfaction is up 2.4 percent, from 61.8 to 63.3, with 71 percent of agencies improving their Best Places to Work index score since the last rankings in 2007.

As I said, the numbers don’t lie. You can see the FAA’s scores on this page.

The FAA’s overall score went like this:

2003: 60.1
2005: 58.8
2007: 50.3
2009: 49.4

Our numbers dropped in pretty much every category, too. Here’s a look at the components of the study:

The Focus FAA news story about this study tries to find a silver lining by pointing out that the FAA’s scores in four categories (”teamwork”, “performance-based rewards and advancement”, “training and development”, and “support for diversity”) went up from 2007 to 2009… but when you look at the chart, you realize that none of them have climbed back up above where they were in 2003. In fact, most of them are still considerably lower; only one category even matches where the FAA was 6 years ago.

What chaps my hide about this is the attitude of the so-called leaders of the FAA. They threw out the last FAA-wide Employee Attitude Survey because they felt like the results had been “compromised”. Jerry Lavey makes mention of this in an “AOA Highlights” column…

You can’t lay the blame for the poor numbers on one group or another trying to flood the survey and skew the results, because they couldn’t have done that if they wanted to. The survey was conducted by OPM and the survey was sent to a random sample of employees.

Lavey makes it sound as though he knew perfectly well that this survey would have negative results, and seems to try and distance himself from the notion that some would “blame” a group trying to “flood” the survey and “skew the results”.

Now, back in August of 2007, I offered up the URL to the 2007 FAA Employee Attitude Survey. Some controllers- I don’t know how many- clicked on that link and filled it in. In the post where I pointed out the URL to the survey, I said this:

Still, the FAA’s leaders are stubborn and believe that everything in the FAA is just fine and dandy. They’re doing a limited version of the EAS right now, and sending out letters and emails to get agency employees to participate.

If you’re an FAA employee, particularly if you’re a disgruntled FAA employee, and you got an email or a letter, I’d like to strongly encourage you to be sure and do your survey. It’s not the full length form, and there’s no room for comments, but that means that it’s extremely quick- takes all of five minutes.

You can go directly to the site and do it right now from this link:

http://www.keysurvey.com/FAA2007EAS

Strangely enough, there doesn’t appear to be anything requiring a code or whatever, so if you’re an FAA employee who did NOT get selected as one of the “random” few to participate (supposedly they’re only polling 1/3 of the entire FAA this time around) it looks like you can still get your input in.

The FAA then threw out the results of the survey because they were too negative.

And Jerry Lavey was a big cheerleader and apologist for that when it happened. In an item titled “Gaming the System”, in January of 2008, he said…

However, for the controllers, who do not have access, or easy access, to computers, we had to send out letters or cards giving them the URL to the survey so they could do it at home. Well, apparently the URL was shopped around to a much wider audience than the randomly selected group and its new recipients were urged by bloggers to send a loud message about how dissatisfied they are with management. So, when the results came in with this unprecedented rate of return from one segment of the workforce, we had more than ample reason to believe that something was amiss. We didn’t know, for example, if some people took the survey multiple times, but it was clear in any event that it was no longer the random results, with a sampling across the agency, that the survey was designed to provide us.

…But, the fact remains that the survey was compromised, so we threw out the results, just as any reputable polling group would do if their data had been gamed.

So let’s see. Here at the Follies, at least, we didn’t “urge” employees to take the survey multiple times, or to “flood” the survey. We said “every employee ought to take the survey, and it’s especially important if you’re disgruntled so that the FAA leadership hears you.”

What’s more, they didn’t need to throw out those results; they were going to extrapolate the numbers based on however many people took the survey anyway (which wasn’t going to all employees, only to a few). If they planned to survey 33%, and wound up (through extra people answering) with a 50% response rate, it doesn’t “compromise” the results; in fact, a bigger sample size makes the results MORE accurate. (Just ask your friendly local statistician.)

Finally, to see Jerry Lavey sit there in HQ and pompously declare that the numbers really ARE bad, and “you can’t blame” people for somehow trying to skew the numbers when HE sat in that same chair and blamed EXACTLY THAT just 17 months or so before makes me want to puke.

The reality is this: The FAA is a terrible employer, and even when we, the employees, have tried to get that message through to the leadership, they have ignored us or deliberately tuned us out and blamed US for the problem.

Oh, and the FAA’s Employee Attitude Survey? Dead. I hear that Ventris Gibson was part of a deal a few years ago that basically killed the EAS. Why take chances on the employees actually voicing their honest opinions?