Several years ago, I made the acquaintance of a smart, pretty woman. She was reasonably well adjusted, hard working, loved her children, motivated, and had tons going for her.

She was also an abused wife of an alcoholic jerk.

It mystified me then, and still mystifies me, how people can get themselves into completely dysfunctional relationships and STAY in them for decades. Why don’t they do something? Why don’t they leave? Why can’t they break the cycle of abuse-apology-remorse-abuse-apology-remorse-abuse-apology-remorse?

I think of my friend, who was (thankfully) taking the steps needed to separate from her husband and get herself and her kids into a healthier place in their lives, and I just shake my head. How on earth could it have taken so long?

But you know… it’s easier to say that from the outside, and far harder to see it when you’re in the midst of this situation.

Let me tell you a story.

A supervisor in the FAA gets a phone call; a controller’s family member has died, and the controller needs to take the rest of the week off to deal with the aftermath of family death- funerals to plan, people coming to town, grieving, etc.

Unfortunately, the controller was scheduled for a mid shift (graveyard, from midnight to 8am) and so someone’s got to be forced into that shift. Nobody’s available on the day shift (because of understaffing, but that’s a different post) so they have to get someone to come in on their day off and work overtime.

The supervisor goes through the entire list of “volunteers” for overtime, but can’t get anyone to work it. This means it’s time to involuntarily force someone to work the shift. So the supervisor calls a guy on the list, and the guy is foolish enough to answer the phone call.

Supervisor tells the controller that he’s got OT on the first of his two days off. The controller says “well, that’s going to be tough, because I can’t make it in for that; I’m in another city, on vacation leave, over 1,000 miles away, and I won’t be home until my second day off.”

The supervisor tells the controller “well that’s not my problem, is it? You’re on the shift” and hangs up the phone.

A little more background info here; the NEXT guy on the involuntary list was sitting about 12 feet away from the supervisor at the time, so it could have been as easy as “okay, sorry, didn’t realize you were on vacation, let me get the next guy on the list” and ask him (and he was able to work it).

This almost seems too stupid, too cruel, and too uncaring to think that a supervisor (excuse me, a “front line manager”) would actually do it, right?

Except that it did happen, in my facility, in good old Seattle Center, just a couple of weeks ago.

(The controller was very wise; he just waited a couple of hours, called back in to work where a different supervisor was now in charge, explained the situation, and the much-smarter supervisor took care of the situation.)

And here’s the thing. When I was talking with some folks about this (and almost the entire facility has heard this story by now) one of the things that I said was how I don’t get it. On a personal level, I generally like the supervisor in question. He’s usually friendly, personable, and we chit-chat about stuff.

In other words, he’s usually not a colossal jerk. (Sorry, but there’s really no other way to put it.)

But here’s the thing- I heard myself, defending the supervisor, saying “80 percent of the time, he’s a reasonable guy, but every so often he pulls some incredibly stupid, mean stunt like this…”

And you know what? My friend, the abused wife, would say the same kind of thing about her husband- a guy who drank so much that by the age of 35 his liver was that of a 90-year old and who had a few arrests and several other visits from the cops on his rap sheet. “Oh, he’s not usually a bad guy….”

I tell this story not to embarrass the supervisor (though he should be ashamed of himself) or to put pressure on our facility managers to finally do something to rein the guy in (though they, along with previous managers, have let this kind of thing go with little or no correction in the past) but to illustrate something about controllers and NATCA.

In our relationship with the FAA, we’re all-too-often the battered spouse. We suffer from learned helplessness.

And one of the main things that you should know about learned helplessness is that it means that even when opportunity presents itself for someone to change their situation, they don’t capitalize on that opportunity. They continue to flail around helplessly.

Right now is not a time for NATCA and controllers to be sitting back, happy that we’ve gotten a contract and such. Right now is not the time to rest. Right now is the time to be driving forward, hard, and trying to break the cycle of abuse that we’ve been in.

And this goes for those on the management side of the house, too. FAA managers everywhere need to take this chance to get rid of, or at least seriously correct, those in their ranks who are abusive.

A start has been made. Guys like Joe Miniace and Bruce Johnson have been shunted off into side jobs with little power or responsibility (though why a notorious union-buster like Miniace is even still employed by the FAA is another one of life’s mysteries). But it’s time to do more; it’s time to set the agency onto a course where hard-nosed-but-FAIR managers are encouraged.

Many NATCAvists don’t mind a tough manager, so long as the manager is fair and not blatantly stupid. But stories like the one above are far too common in the FAA; I bet nearly every facility, large and small, has stories like that of managers and supervisors who are on minor power trips or are just plain jerks for unknown reasons.

If the FAA truly intends on dragging itself out of the bottom of the list of federal agencies to work for, now is the time to start drumming those managers either in line or out of the FAA.

From the “Your Two Cents” item on the FAA’s web site, posted on March 17:

Boot To The Throat
You’re not serious are you? There’s been no leadership exemplified by FAA management for far too many years. There’s been a “boot-to-the-throat” mentality and a demoralizing of the workforce (controllers), certainly, but there’s been no leadership. Real leaders lead by example. Every controller I work with would’ve had no issues with having our pay capped if only management had done the same to their pay. Anything less is unacceptable. You want us to pay for your NextGen grandiose delusions, but none of you have contributed one penny toward the effort. I was sequencing several JFK arrivals 30 miles in trail over Nebraska and Iowa last week. It was a bit complicated with all the chop and other overflight traffic I had to contend with. In all of that, I wondered how NextGen would’ve made my life easier and I couldn’t come up with anything. More runways would be nice, I thought. Anyway, thanks for the laugh about leadership. One can’t help but be amazed that they actually pay you to write this tripe.

Kevin Gilmore

Kevin is a heck of a nice guy. You can see how nice he is for yourself by reading his blog. I check it out occasionally, and even though I’ve never met him, the sense that I get is that he’s a genuine, good guy who tries to be honest about what he believes and thinks and feels.

His letter is good. Obviously he shares the feelings of thousands of FAA employees; that the agency’s leaders have not actually displayed true leadership, but instead have cut the pay of the employees (while ensuring that mangerial pay continues to rise).

He points out the demoralized workforce. He points out the “boot to the throat” mentality displayed by management- and this is on record, folks, with things like the audio recordings of Bruce Johnson exhorting the ATO managers and supervisors to return to their field facilities and delay airplanes if they have to, just to make a point to the controller workforce about who’s in charge. “We’ll back you up all the way”, said Bruce.

Kevin points out that the FAA wants to pay for NextGen by cutting controller pay, but that NextGen won’t do diddly-squat to help controllers do their job. This is also backed up by the record, with plenty of comments from Marion Blakey saying that the agency can’t afford NextGen if operational costs stay “too high”.

All around, Kevin’s letter is a good one. He doesn’t mock anyone personally (well, other than Jerry Lavey, calling his writing “tripe”- but at least he pointed out WHY it was tripe and how the FAA’s management has been a great big failure). He expresses his feelings about how the FAA leaders’ actions are hypocritical. It’s a great letter, backed by example and talking about his job- moving airplanes.

So in the next week’s “Your Two Cents”, we hear from an FAA supervisor named Frank Whitten:

After reading Kevin Gilmore’s thoughts on Jerry Lavey’s article on leadership, I had a couple of pertinent thoughts (see “Boot To The Throat” in last week’s “Your Two Cents”). Allow me to retort: “There’s been no leadership exemplified by FAA management for far too many years,” you said. You mean you can’t find any leadership, Nada, not a smidgen, not even one iota of leadership? You must feel so lost, adrift in a sea of leaderless employees. Who was your last true leader? Jane Garvey? If so, remember, she gave the farm away. Is that what you mean by “…lead(Ing) by example?”

Here’s a possible reason for the pay disparity between you and me: I’m finally being compensated for having to deal with your negative, whining, everyone’s-an-idiot-but-yourself attitude you so clearly expressed in your little written tantrum. We have a couple of Kevins at our facility, too. That’s where we supervisors earn our money. And yes, just so you’ll know, my pay is capped too.

Your writing skills are actually quite advanced. You’re not an unintelligent man. But using this gift to personally attack someone whose writing ability is far above mine and yours, and who consistently makes cogent and fair summations in everything I have read by him, indicates to me that you have some underlying anger/stress issues that might need addressing in a professional setting.

Final point: You said: “One can’t help but be amazed that they actually pay you to write this tripe.” I’ll wager that people in the private sector would be amazed to know how you feel about your bosses and actually choose to stay in your job. I’m also quite sure that if you wrote your venomous screed in a public forum while employed in a private enterprise, the choice to stay in that job would no longer be yours.

Frank Whitten
Southwest Region

Wow. Nice letter, Frank.

Frank goes off. He proclaims that he deserves his higher pay because he has to put up with employees with lousy attitudes.

Note- he doesn’t actually take on Kevin’s point, which is the hypocrisy of a management workforce which proclaims that the FAA absolutly must cut costs and uses that to justify cutting non-management pay, but turns around and keeps managerial pay raises and high pay levels.

No, Frank decides to blame it on “whiny, negative” employee attitudes. That’s why he thinks he is “finally” getting the pay he deserves. (Plainly Frank thinks all this time, he’s been getting screwed because he deserved so very much more money than the controllers.)

Then he declares that Kevin must need professional counseling, because (to Frank, anyway) Kevin’s displaying some kind of anger management issue.

Frank closes with a not-very-veiled threat that declares that Kevin’s speaking his mind would get him (Kevin) fired in the public sector.

Note that in Frank’s letter, there’s nothing about the actual points that Kevin made, like the hypocritical FAA managers; the lack of true leadership; the fact that NextGen won’t help with the actual JOB of separating aircraft for at least a decade; about the boot-to-the-throat mentality; about the failure to lead by example.

Instead, Frank actually proves Kevin’s point. Kevin was right on- boot to the throat? Yep, Frank says Kevin should be fired rather than speak his mind.

Hypocrisy? Yep, Frank declares that his job is to deal with lousy attitudes. (Remember, Kevin pointed out his OWN job- vectoring airplanes over Iowa and Nebraska for in-trail requirements to New York City.)

Leading by example? Yep, Frank declares that by gum HE deserves his high pay because he has to put up with so many lousy people. (Kevin pointed out that managers claim the reason pay for workers had to be cut was to pay for NextGen.)

In essence, Frank’s letter made Kevin’s point for him better than Kevin, or I, possibly could.

Frank’s letter hasn’t gone un-noticed. Lots of people that have worked with him have chimed in to the Follies with some tips. All kinds of stuff about him, from work stuff (afraid of traffic, only has a year or two of actual experience as an FPL controller, etc) to personal stuff (his marriage to a gal he apparently met when she was a student in the FAA’s training program at his facility- while he was still married to wife #1! Tsk tsk, Frank… and what was your job title at that time?) and so forth.

But you know what? We don’t need to let everyone know how despised the guy is, or personally slag on him (well, not too much, anyway). It’d be pretty easy, apparently, and fun, but let’s do something else, instead.

Let’s take a quick gander at Kevin’s performance rating. (He said it was okay and shared it.) Remember, Frank would love to do away with Kevin and the other negative losers like him. He thinks getting rid of Kevin will make the FAA better.

Mr Gilmore is an accomplished professional air traffic controller who combines dedication, competence, and integrity into every aspect of his job.

Mr Gilmore is a “go to” guy who always successfully contributes a high level of productivity, no matter what the circumstances are.

Mr Gilmore is a CIC and always conducts himself as an organized leader of the area, never compromising the goals of the ATO.

Mr Gilmore is an OJTI who delivers objectivity, knowledge, and mentoring to our developmentals. Mr Gilmore is directly responsible for the successful certification of a new CPC…

Mr Gilmore can work high volumes of complex traffic with no loss of service or quality, because he is always well-planned and prepared for the dynamic demands that he faces.

Mr Gilmore is a highly valued asset to the ATO, and he is integral in the success of the ATO FLIGHT PLAN GOALS.

(the emphasis in the last item was added. -ed)

So, folks, you make the call. Kevin’s boss declared him to be “integral” to the success of what we do. Kevin’s letter talked about what he sees as his job, MOVING AIRPLANES. Kevin’s boss says, basically, that Kevin kicks ass.

Frank himself declared that HIS job and how he and the FAA’s supervisors earn their pay is “having to deal with your negative, whining, everyone’s-an-idiot-but-yourself attitude you so clearly expressed in your little written tantrum. We have a couple of Kevins at our facility, too. That’s where we supervisors earn our money.”

(And that’s a direct quote from his letter, folks.)

A controller who points out hypocrisy and talks about his job moving airplanes. A phlegm (that’s Front Line Manager, FLM) who declares his job is dealing with people he perceives to be whiners.

The controller doesn’t say he wants managers fired; he just wants to see some real leadership that he can respect. The FLM says he wants to get rid of the “Kevins” of the FAA. (Thankfully Kevin’s real boss doesn’t feel the same way!)

Gee, is it any shock that many of the agency’s employees think this is a screwed up situation?

Frank, pal, just keep writing letters. I could slag on you, I could tell you all the stuff that employees at your facility passed along… but why? You are doing a fine, fine job of proving our points all by yourself. I hope you write more, Frank. Keep up that demanding work of putting up with the whiners.

(You know, the ones plugged into the scopes and talking to airplanes while you… do what, exactly? We know their job, Frank- but what’s yours? I’m sure your facility chief was delighted to hear your perception of how you’re earning your money. I’m sure the FAA’s upper level folks were even more happy to hear it.)

I’ll tell you MY perception of the FAA. The problem with today’s FAA is that there are FAR too many people with Frank’s mindset (managers deserve high pay for putting up with whiners) in charge, and not enough people with Kevin’s mindset (lead by example, stop hypocrisy, we could handle having pay frozen if the leaders did too, etc) in charge.

I hope that there’s enough of the Kevins out there to save the FAA from the Franks. And personally, I’d take a facility full of Kevins- great controllers who are gutsy enough to speak their minds- over a facility full of Franks any day.

I know I said that the Follies was going to be three days a week, but that’s my minimum goal; when I can’t help but write about something, it’ll be more.

Here’s a story that goes in the “I can’t make this up” file. A controller is reporting in to work for the first day of his workweek after a couple of days off. He’s called in by the supervisor for a meeting, but the NATCA rep is told it’s a performance issue and therefore no union representation will be allowed.

(And on a side note- how stupid is this? I don’t understand why managerial and supervisory types do this. Even if it really is a performance issue, if the employee would like a union rep, why not allow it? It would be erring on the side of caution and helping the employee feel more secure about what’s going on. Smart managers allow union reps at practically all meetings, just to keep things running smoothly.)

So what’s the meeting about? What performance of the controller’s is bad enough that it needs a formal meeting to correct it?

When filling out a delay log, the controller didn’t cross the “Z” in his operating initials (ZZ) in the log.

To remedy this situation, the controller was assigned to do some training and re-read the FAA’s order regarding air traffic control, the 7110.65.

Now, I’ll freely admit- the 7110 does indeed specify that controllers should use the little line in the middle when writing the letter “Z”. It’s to keep anyone from confusing it with the number “2″.

But here’s the thing- in the space for operating initials, the only thing that is supposed to be written in the box are letters. It’s not like someone has a letter/number combination for initials! They’re always two letters, at least at every FAA facility I’ve ever heard of.

In fact, the 7110 even says that in some instances it’s not required to write the slant-line through the number “0″ so you can tell it from the upper-case letter “O”, if there’s no chance for confusion (ie, if you are only writing numbers in a given area). There’s also no requirement to underline the letter “S” to differentiate it from the number “5″. (And after 18 years in the FAA, I had never known there WAS a requirement to underline the letter “S” if you’re hand-writing it until I was researching this blog item!)

To be hypertechnical, there is no such exclusion for the Z/2 combination, although there probably ought to be.

But here’s the thing: During a time period when the FAA is training like mad, when the controller workforce is understaffed (as evidenced by the large amounts of overtime being used), is it really a good idea for management to pull a controller off the control positions for over an hour to rag his butt for not crossing his “Z”s on a form in a column that will only contain LETTERS (no numbers) anyway?

Of course it isn’t. It’s incredibly, amazingly stupid, and it’s exactly this kind of crap that drives FAA employees nuts.

When you have managers who think this is more important than actually working traffic, it’s no wonder those same managers are so widely reviled and disrespected. This entire thing could be fixed in 30 seconds by the supervisor saying to the controller “hey, someone noticed you don’t cross your ‘Z’s when you filled out some delay log last week. Do me a favor and try to remember to cross them from now on, okay?” when the controller first walked in.

Boom, it’s a reasonable request, it gets to the heart of the so-called problem, and the controller would probably appreciate being treated like an adult. If the controller was a jerk about it, yeah, take it to a more formal level, but the way they did it? Incredibly dumb.

…at least when it comes to running for public office. That’s what I figure, anyway.

See, I’ve been blogging and writing about stuff on the internet for, oh, several years now. And everything you say lives out there, somewhere, lurking around in those darned tubes.

I’ve written on stuff as varied as abortion and the two ugliest girls in all of Thailand. I’ve mused about religion, the meaning of life, and whined about ticky-tacky little crap that is totally meaningless. Probably far more of the latter than I care to think about.

I have to say, though, that at least I don’t think there’s something quite like this floating around out there with my name on it:

New Supervisor Bid Form:
I hereby attest and affirm that, since we lost out on the
Nontract, I want to join the winning team. I therefore take
a solemn blood oath that:

1] I can no longer work traffic.
2] I no longer care about the job I was hired to do.
3] I will only be concerned with what promotes myself.
4] I no longer have any ethical standards and will just follow orders.
5] I will always be vigilant to shirt-tucking offenses andother truly important matters.

Please mark here with an “X” if you are qualified….._____________________________

The really funny/ironic thing about this “New Supervisor Bid Form” is that the guy who wrote it, the guy who felt so strongly about people bidding on supervisor jobs being bandwagon-jumping weenies who just want to suck up and get money, who felt that supervisors are admitting that they can’t work traffic, don’t care about the job, have no ethics, and only want to promote themselves?

That guy apparently just bid on a supervisor’s job and was selected.

Stan, dude… that stuff lives FOREVER on the internet, man. You’re joining that side you wrote about that way. Do you think they’ll ever fully trust you? Do you think the controllers will ever fully trust you?

This episode has led to an interesting discussion on the NATCA bulletin board. (A discussion, by the way, that the author of that note doesn’t get to take part in; once you bid a supe’s job, you’re booted from the NATCA board.)

Some people are saying that if you bid a supervisor’s job, you’re a traitor. You’re effectively dead to them. They think you’ve stabbed them in the back; during a time of what’s been termed “war”, you went to the other side.

Others say hey, look, you have to realize that people do what’s best for them personally. There’s reasons in people’s lives that we don’t know about, or that someone (like in this case) really wants to get a different job but basically has been told by the FAA that they MUST get some supervisor experience under their belt.

Personally… I’m kind of torn. On the one hand, we should make no mistake about it; as we’ve discussed here the past few days, the simple fact is that the leadership and management of the FAA has broken their word with the agency’s employees.

(It’s not just the air traffic controllers, either- nearly every bargaining unit or group of FAA employees has a legitimate beef somehow with the FAA. That’s probably why it ranked #204 out of 222 agencies in the federal government to work for.)

The sides are quite clear here. The side of the employees has been treated, by the FAA’s leadership, like something you’d scrape off the bottom of your shoe. By going into management, people are endorsing those tactics.

The flip side, though, is that these folks are still humans. They’re our co-workers, and in many cases our friends. Over the past two seasons I’ve shared Seahawks tickets with a guy who took a supervisor’s job, and I think of him as my friend. If he asked me to, I dunno, watch his kids or something, I’d do it. I have other friends who’ve taken supe’s jobs since the imposition of the White Book.

So how to reconcile these feelings? Some people won’t. The comments to this post will include “screw them, they’re scumbags” types of thought.

Personally, here’s what I think: It’s just business, it’s not personal. On a business level- yes, if you go into management, you’re endorsing scummy tactics. You’re making a mistake. You’re aligning yourself with people who are willing to lie, to break their word, who have no honor and who believe that the best thing for the FAA is to treat the agency’s employees with contempt.

From that point of view, at work, when it comes to doing business, it’s going to be very hard for me to deal with you as though you’re a person worthy of trust. I’m going to run for FacRep of Seattle Center this year, and I can tell you that I will put as much as I possibly can into writing- because I want to be able to document and prove stuff if/when I need to.

(The irony here is that I still think this is an effective thing to bother doing, considering that the FAA put the Green Book into writing and had no problem breaking THAT written agreement. Still, that’s my plan and agenda.)

BUT… on a personal level… I don’t automatically dislike someone who bids a supe job. I know perfectly well that the majority of our supervisors and managers DO want what’s best for the employees, for the FAA as a whole, and for the nation. I think they’re sorely misguided about what that is, but I don’t hate them for it. I recognize that things are driving people to make those decisions.

Is this trying to have it both ways? Yeah, maybe. But to me, it’s simple- there’s business, and there’s personal. Too many things have gone really wrong in the FAA’s history when people confuse the two. I don’t want a complete rollback to the Green Book to win some kind of personal victory; I want it because it’s business, and in business, if you sign an agreement or contract, you are expected to live up to the terms of that agreement.

It’s not personal. It’s just business. And by the “it’s just business” standard, if you bid a supervisor’s job, you are going to the side that lies, that fires people and screws with their lives just to make a point.

If you can PERSONALLY live with knowing that… well, then on the personal level, I’m a bit sorry for you, and we’re simply going to have to agree to disagree.

As far as me personally… I’ll say this much: I will not bid a supervisor’s job under the White Book. I would never bid a management job during a time when the management is breaking their word to their employees on a daily basis. The FAA’s management has behaved without honor and deserves shame, and I wouldn’t be a part of that.

(Unless, of course, I really really really want/need the money and decide that it’s okay to sell out, in which case all bets are off.)

Those who were already there- you folks need to stand up and say “hey, this is wrong.” I’m not asking you to get yourselves fired, but it would sure be nice if you could grow some courage and do the right thing, even just a little bit, a little more often. If enough of you do it, we can change the agency back to what it used to be.

No, not abuse of supervisors… abuse BY supervisors.

Here’s the deal. Part of the FAA’s mantra “run like a business” has been increased attention to costs. Costs, costs, costs- they want to save all kinds of money as much as possible. Or so they claim- but taking a page out of AIG’s playbook, when it comes to travel junkets for managers, the FAA is certainly willing to spend all kinds of money.

So part of the White Book (the unilaterally imposed work rules) is that supervisors (or, as we not-so-lovingly refer to them, phleghms, for Front Line Managers) are supposed to do things that try and cut costs.

For example, a controller recently had some vacation leave scheduled. He and his family decided to not use it, so he went to the supe and said he wanted to turn his leave in and work. Request granted, except for his “day-in-lieu-of”. A day-in-lieu is when an employee’s RDO (Regular Day Off) falls on a holiday (in this case Thanksgiving); the “holiday” moves to one of the employee’s work days.

So in this case, the guy had the week off, tried to cancel the leave, and they granted it except for the day that would have served as his Thanksgiving holiday. Why? To save money, of course- if he had worked that day, he would have effectively received double pay, the regular work day and then a paid holiday.

Okay, that makes sense, right? Save money? Except that the normal staffing on that shift is 6, and by forcing him off, they only had 5 people working. Remember, this didn’t fall on the ACTUAL holiday; it was a day-in-lieu of, so the traffic levels would be normal. (On some holidays the airlines’s schedules are reduced, so it makes sense to reduce staffing levels.)

In other words, the FAA has said that the normal, SAFE staffing level for this particular shift is 6, but they were willing to work with a less-safe 5. When this was pointed out to the supervisor, the supe said basically “I can do this under our rules, so I’m going to do it.”

But wait, there’s more.

Fast forward to a day or two ago. It’s snowing like mad. The facility starts sending people home on excused absence “snow leave”. One of the guys working that day is working “credit hours”, earning time that they’re going to burn at a future date. The FAA claims that credit hours costs them money and they try and reduce them, as a general rule.

But the guy working credit hours isn’t sent home- others are. When asked about it, the supervisor says “but the guy working credit time volunteered to stay.” It’s pointed out to the supervisor that when it came to the employee’s wishes earlier the supe didn’t care, and the supervisor basically says that’s still the case; the supe can do whatever he/she chooses.

So in the first case, it was against the employee’s wishes; the supe justified doing what he did to SAVE the agency money (even though it put them into a reduced staffing situation). In the second case, it was against the employee’s wishes; the supe wound up COSTING the agency money but justified it by saying he could do whatever he wanted.

This is the type of “logic” that passes in the FAA today. It’s one thing if there were at least some rhyme or reason to it; if the supervisors and managers ALWAYS did whatever would save the FAA money, then at least they’d have a concrete reason for their choices.

But they don’t. They do whatever sounds good to them at the time and frequently justify it not by the orders but by saying “we’re allowed to do whatever we want, are you challenging that?”

That, folks, is just plain abusive- and it’s stupid. It’s no wonder employee morale is in the toilet in the FAA. What’s worse, the people in charge of the agency don’t believe those of us who keep telling them these types of stories over and over and over. Sad, sad, sad days for the FAA.

I almost hate to bring this up… but it’s past time to do so.

We have a heck of a lot of people in management in the FAA who simply aren’t qualified, by the reckoning of many of us who’re non-supervisory employees.

For example, there’s numerous places where 20+ year veterans are now being overseen by folks with 3, 5, maybe 7 years in the agency. That alone isn’t all necessarily bad; many of those grumpy old vets (like, say, me) aren’t bidding the jobs, and longevity alone isn’t an automatic qualification for the job of supervisor or manager.

But there’s also a number of stories of supervisors who are now managing the operations in areas where they’re only partially qualified, or worse- not qualified at all.

Here’s what the FAA’s own order says about the qualifications that a supervisor (or a “front line manager”, or phlegm, as they are not-so-affectionately referred to) is supposed to have before providing direct supervision to operations:

2-3-3 REQUIREMENTS

b. Currency. To maintain currency, personnel shall rotate through all positions on which they are certified each calendar month. Additionally, they shall meet the following minimum time requirements on control positions or operational positions, as appropriate, each calendar month:

1. First-level supervisors (including facility managers who also serve as first-level supervisors), and support specialists who are required to maintain currency by their air traffic managers:

(a) Radar/tower control/operational positions (excluding the operational supervisor in charge (OSIC) position): Four hours tower and four hours radar. If certified in only one area of operation (tower or radar), then a total of eight hours in that area.

(b) All other facilities: Eight hours in control/operational positions (excluding the OSIC position).

NOTE-
Although the OSIC position is an operational position, time working as an OSIC is not counted toward currency time.

In English? In centers and big tracons (without tower cabs), supervisors are supposed to work 8 hours a month on a control position. In “up/down” facilities, it’s four in both the radar function and the tower cab; if it’s a tower cab only, they’re supposed to get 8 hours total.

Now, 8 hours a month isn’t too much to get. But what happens at many facilities (including mine, ZSE) is that a supervisor working in an area with 6 or 7 sectors of operation usually only gets checked out on 2 positions. Often that’s the “D” side and the “R” side on a single sector, so they’re really only qualified on one sector out of 7 in an entire area.

We’ve got several supervisors who never worked in the areas of specialty they’re assigned, so it’s not like they were controllers in the area and were therefore previously signed off; in fact, some of our supervisors never worked in an enroute facility at all until they came to ZSE.

And, frankly, some of them probably couldn’t check out on the entire area; they get signed off on the slowest sector just to meet the book requirement.

But wait, it gets worse. There’s facilities where supervisors have been providing direct supervision to employees and they aren’t signed off AT ALL in the area they’re working- not even on a single position of responsibility.

For example, JFK Airport in New York. They’ve got a supervisor who has been training for over a year on Local Control, but hasn’t been signed off. The union has pointed out to the facility manager that this is prohibited, and that the supervisor often makes screwy or stupid or ill-considered decisions, but the manager blows them off.

In Cleveland, reports are that the supervisors there never actually get fully signed off on a position; they simply work their “currency” time with controllers plugged in with them.

In Tampa, they had the evaluation team come in and say that time on flight data (which is, as it sounds, not exactly a “control” position; it’s a position responsible for entering/correcting the flight plans and such, but control decisions are not made there) doesn’t count towards currency.

As a result, 9 out of 11 supervisors there were declared to be not-current. They weren’t meeting the basic qualification to be supervising the operations at all. What’s more, all of the certifications of developmentals those supervisors had done were now suspect; if the supervisor isn’t qualified to work in the operation, can they turn around and certify a trainee to do so on their own?

The decision was that no, they cannot, and therefore the certifications didn’t count. However, they only went back two months; trainees who’d been certified on positions prior to that were simply declared to be okay. (This despite the fact that at least two trainees got certified on positions and within a month or three had operational errors.)

This kind of thing happens ALL THE TIME in the FAA. Our OJTIs are often training developmentals on positions and then a supervisor comes in to do a check ride… on a sector that the supervisor cannot work by themself. So the OJTI has to stay plugged in the entire time, and you have to wonder just what it is that the supervisor is rating the developmental on!

Now, some of this has been going on for years in the FAA. That doesn’t make it any better, but while it’s not ideal, we’ve often been able to make it work out.

The problem is that because of the past few years in the agency, we have far more supervisors and managers who’re winding up in spots that they’re simply not qualified for- and since there’s fewer people overall in management who ARE really qualified, the newbies have fewer people to go get help from, or look to for advice on stuff.

Those paying attention to this post should notice that there’s absolutely nothing in here about labor-management relations, or contract disputes, or pay scales, or work rules.

Yet I can tell you- the same type of thinking and “leadership” that’s gotten us into this spot is what brought on all of those other problems. It’s all related, and it stems from a bunch of power-drunken folks who seem to think that there’s something grossly wrong with the way the FAA was doing things up until a few years ago.

Despite this, the reality is that things have taken a turn for the worse in the past few years. In other words, they’re making things WORSE, not better.

How qualified is your boss for his job?

One of the things that they beat into your head when you go to work for the government is that you should NOT commit any fraud, waste, and/or abuse. Of course, if you pay attention, you start seeing it around you in the FAA.

A big part of the problem is that if/when you bring it up, YOU are the troublemaker, not the people who are doing whatever it is that you’re reporting.

A recent discussion on the NATCA BBS was about supervisory and staff support jobs in ATC facilities, and it branched out a bit to include contractors as well. A few of the anecdotes:

• Staff specialist at a smaller facility, duties are greatly reduced and the facility manager is presently trying to cut them back even more by getting a WCG contractor support person in to take over training functions. In the past, this position was required to liason with outside entities, but those duties have been removed. Presently the staffer just sits and listens to tapes of ATCSs, criticizing their “errors”.
• A staff specialist at an up/down facility (one with both a control tower and a radar approach control function) who is only qualified to work in the tower cab. Specialist trains people on non-radar functions despite never having been signed off on those functions himself.
• A tower at a middle-sized airport with quite a bit of international commercial service with two people- a staff specialist and a training specialist- who have never been certified on any positions at that tower.
• A tower at a major airport has a staff specialist who is certified on clearance delivery but cannot really do even THAT job because he has terrible phraseology. This specialist is now grading controllers’ scores on phraseology checkups.
• A staff specialist at another mid-level tower facility doing quality assurance checks on phraseology who has NEVER been signed off at ANY facility, let alone the one he is working in.
• A facility where an individual came in and, while still in training, was named “controller of the year” by the facility management. Shortly after being checked out, the individual retires and gets a job as the facility’s WCG job a month later (apparently still buddies with the facility management).

  So this guy, who was nominated as controller of the year before he was even talking to airplanes by himself, is now doing all the paperwork for the same managers who nominated him. Used to be that a single FAA supervisor handled all that stuff- ops error reports, training forms, doing the schedule, etc.

  Now it’s mostly shuffled onto the individual, who is apparently so swamped he was asked and received approval to hire a second contractor to serve as his secretary.

  So basically, all the stuff that used to be handled by a single supervisor is now being done by two supes, the air traffic manager, this WCG contractor, and this contractor’s secretary. Meanwhile, the controllers- who actually move airplanes- can’t get leave.

You’d like to think that these stories are the rare exception, not the rule, but there’s more and more frequently things like this that make me fume… and also make me a little jealous, because I’m not scamming my profits from the government like these ex-FAA employees.

I know there’s a lot of posts up to read, but this just had to be reported:

At Fart Fort Worth Center they just had a supervisor brief the controllers that they are not to pass gas while plugged in on sector. If they need to do so, they’re supposed to raise their hand to get the supervisor’s attention, be excused from the sector for a brief time for their physiological need, and then promptly return.

I can’t make this up, people. This is the FAA. Seriously.

Now, I’m no fan of smelling someone else’s farts… but wouldn’t it just make more sense to get controllers out on regular breaks at intervals frequent enough that they can take care of this kind of thing while on a normal break?

Ahh, but you see, thanks to the understaffing we’re seeing throughout the FAA, and thanks to the new regime’s insistence that we be “more productive”, controllers are frequently left on position for two hours at a time or longer.

All you desk-dwellers of the world… imagine sitting at your desk, putting in 100% concentration the entire time (controllers aren’t occasionally surfing the web- even to awesome sites like, oh, The FAA Follies) and not being able to get up and walk down the hall for a quick fart.

Wouldn’t you like a break a tad more often than once every two hours? And what supervisor can possibly brief this action item by management with a straight face and take themselves seriously?

From HSV, which is Huntsville Alabama, comes an amusing story…

Seems that the facility opens without enough staffing (there’s a surprise). Later a supervisor shows up and goes in to start working the TRACON. Said supervisor doesn’t notice the red lights glowing on the ASR-9 panel, which are warning that the radar is about to go out. Said supervisor also doesn’t notice a great big red X on the WSP.

Radar fails. Supervisor wails! “What do I do, the radar quit!?!?”

The controller who had just gotten out on break turns around, calmly walks back in, makes the entries to turn on CENRAP (Center Radar), and walks back out of the control room.

The FAA Follies. A supervisor doesn’t know how to accomplish one of the most basic functions of an approach control, namely, how to switch over from the terminal radar to the center radar- but they’re “in charge” of the facility. We can’t make this kind of thing up, folks.

(Side note: The supervisor’s nickname is “Stumbles”. Apparently she’s got quite a job history, including having an operational error while conducting on-the-job training, trying to cover it up, and getting caught and being slapped with a 30-day suspension for that little episode. No wonder the controllers have such [little] respect for her.)