Mark My Words (part 1)
Posted by Martinlady on January 21st, 2009
As I write this, it has been 866 days without a ratified contact for the controller workforce. A number of unions, federal and private sector, are feeling hopeful that the inauguration of Barack Obama next week will mark the beginning of a significant, positive change in the history of labor in this country and truly eradicate the worst of the residual effects of Reagan firing the PATCO controllers in 1981. We saw bits of this positive change during the Clinton administration, but under GWB, the entire country, not just organized labor, suffered – and still suffers – greatly.
I originally envisioned this post to be solely about Obama’s plans to cut middle management in government and was researching numbers. It seems that there have been an increasing number of supervisory bids since the imposition of the Imposed Work Rules (IWRs) and I wanted to see what those numbers actually showed. I found some interesting ones that I’ll share, but a few other thoughts have been rolling around in my cranium that I think need to be said and they all are related my final conclusion, so this might end up being another two-part series for you readers so that I can get them out into the general blogosphere.
But first, let’s look at numbers. I couldn’t find an exact number of supervisors and controllers in 1981 at the time of the PATCO strike. All I found was this letter to the editor of the New York Times which mentions a combined number of supervisors and staff specialists which leads me to believe that the ratio of controllers to supervisors probably averaged somewhere between 9:1 to 10:1.
For more current numbers I checked the FAA Administrator’s Fact Book. I don’t know why it still amazes me that their own numbers aren’t consistent, but I’ll use the data from the December 2006 book for fiscal year 2004 (FY2004). The FAA’s data says they had 14,736 controllers and 1,722 supervisors. That’s a ratio of 8.55 controllers to 1 supervisor.
Those who have been in the Agency might recall that part of the premise for reclass was that controllers would pick up more Controller-in-Charge duties and the Agency would let the supervisory ranks to attrit to a ratio closer of 10:1. Reclass was in 1996; contract in 1998.
In June 2002, the (GAO) submitted this report to Congress – Air Traffic Control: FAA Needs to Better Prepare for Impending Wave of Controller Attrition. The GAO’s numbers for FY2000 are 15,120 controllers and 1,862. A ratio of 8.12 controllers to 1 supervisor.
More from the report:
Rather, FAA’s strategy for replacing controllers is generally to hire new controllers only when current, experienced controllers leave….For example, FAA’s hiring process does not adequately take into account the potential increases in future hiring and the time necessary to fully train replacements. (page 4)
Ultimately, FAA’s ability to successfully plan and manage this situation will dictate its overall impact on the nation’s air traffic control system and the safety and efficiency of air travel in the United States. (page 43; emphasis added)
FAA estimates by 2010, it will need about 2,000 more controllers than are presently employed to handle future increases in air traffic. (page 5)
And from page 22…and the FAA’s own numbers as they provided to the GAO, the Agency was supposedly planning to have 16,836 controllers in 2008. Oh, one more tidbit from the same table; in 2003, they were projecting to have 15,606 controllers as per the negotiated agreement with NATCA.
From the FAA Administrator’s Fact Book: As of June 30, 2008, the Agency has 15,308 controllers (which clearly states that the total includes individuals in the Academy and trainees not certified on anything yet). 1,857 supervisors for a ratio of 8.24 controllers to 1 supervisor.
I threw a lot of numbers out there, but in essence, there are a couple things that are worthy of note. One, the Agency had already reneged on its agreement(s) with NATCA about controller staffing…long before the IWRs. There were supposed to have 15,606 controllers onboard in 2003…but as of 2008 – five years later, they’re still 300 short of that number (having never reached that number at all). They were supposed to let the supervisory ranks attrit, yet the ratio of controllers to supervisors increased from 2002 to 2004. In fairness, it did decrease in 2005, but has been rising ever since.
Two, the Agency pretty much gave the GAO and Congress the proverbial finger and didn’t attempt to address the recommendations in that 2002 report until 5 years later. The Agency didn’t start hiring trainees until people had retired; they didn’t even attempt to plan for retirements at individual facilities until 2007 when the IWRs started a larger wave of retirements (as predicted by NATCA) than the Agency was prepared for.
Three, the Agency obviously couldn’t even adequately plan for their OWN recommendations and projected needs. Remember the numbers they gave GAO for 2008? 16,836…and there are 15,606. Not even close, FAA.
Seems to me that thus far, the Agency has unsuccessfully planned and managed this situation – partly because of incompetence, partly because of its union-busting agenda – and the negative impact on the nation’s air traffic control system and the safety and efficiency of air travel in the United States has yet to be fully felt by the flying public. Controllers have been feeling it now for two years and we know no immediate end is in sight.
To be continued…
January 21st, 2009 at 9:04 am
“under GWB, the entire country, not just organized labor, suffered – and still suffers – greatly.”
Oh puleeze!! Suffer??? Over $100k a year? Suffering? 26 days of vacation, 13 days sick leave, paid holidays??? You are suffering? OK, things aren’t that great, but suffering?? Ask my brother who just got laid-off from his $30k a year job if you are suffering. He would trade places with you in a heartbeat, but I bet you wouldn’t. Not that the rest of your post doesn’t have creedence, but you increase the “whine” factor by ten when you invoke the suffering word. While I’m not happy at all with the current situation and the Bush presidency, please keep it in perspective, OK?
January 21st, 2009 at 9:30 am
Read the quote you posted and think about what you wrote, dummy.
January 21st, 2009 at 10:16 am
I gotta agree with Max!
January 21st, 2009 at 10:39 am
With all due respect, I know exactly what the quote said. She said the entire country , not just organized labor. But the perspective in which she is writing is from a controller’s, and it is inclusive. Not only that, but my friend is a union plumber and he just got a big raise cause his company got a big private contract. He is organized labor and not suffering. Had she written something like “Although we have been mostly immune to the economic conditions, alot of the rest of the country are sufffering…….” I wouldn’t have had a problem with it.
However, I disagree with the premise that the economy is all GWB’s fault. The collapse of the credit market is soley the responsibility of Barney Frank and his friends that forced the banks to make bad loans.
January 21st, 2009 at 11:03 am
Lack of oversight is a huge culprit so don’t try to let GWB off the hook. The rich got very rich and we got the shaft. All I need to do to confirm that is to look at something that is only for the ultra rich….such as yacht sales, they have not gone down one bit.
January 21st, 2009 at 11:04 am
” The collapse of the credit market is soley the responsibility of Barney Frank”
I’ll have to disagree here. I’m a life long conservative (note I didn’t say repub.), And Bush (1 and 2) and Clinton get plenty of blame. hey are supposed to be leaders. Why weren’t they shouting warnings from the roof tops and doing what ever they could to prevent this. They’ve all got dirty hands and deserve to go to jail.
January 21st, 2009 at 11:29 am
Aren’t all the people with IQs less than 50 suppose to be listening to Rush this time of day?
January 21st, 2009 at 12:02 pm
You could waterboard Yeah Right… til the cows come home, to no avail. He believes in only what FOX news and wing nut radio tells him to believe. He is not capable of forming his own opinions…he is brainwashed…useless toward any reasonable debate.
He’s one of the 10% that believe GWB is the “greatest of all time”.
He’s one of those guys, that as soon as he opens his mouth, people stop listening.
January 21st, 2009 at 12:20 pm
SCT rat Says: “He is not capable of forming his own opinions…he is brainwashed…useless toward any reasonable debate. He’s one of the 10% that believe GWB is the “greatest of all time”.”
Au contraire SCT Rat! I am not a GWB supporter, for several reasons, one of them being the fact that he did not veto a single bill during his first term. A very good friend is an investment banker, and he was telling me about this crisis 5 years ago. I just think that most of the blame belongs elsewhere, but GWB is not immune as it was his watch.
zabnut Says: (I love reading your posts BTW) All I need to do to confirm that is to look at something that is only for the ultra rich….such as yacht sales, they have not gone down one bit.
That probably is a good point but let’s make it so they can’t buy as many of those yachts by taxing those yachts. Who do makes them? Hourly, unionized workers. Who will get laid off when the “rich” stop buying them? The same. They tried this several years ago and put hundreds of workers out of a job. For once though, they repealed the luxury tax and those affected were hired back.
January 21st, 2009 at 12:22 pm
This is something that the right-wing media has been telling people for some time. The problem with it is that it’s pretty much a lie.
It’s a vaguely racist argument. The suggestion is that the Community Reinvestment Act- a law passed by Congress- forced banks and mortgage lenders to loan money to people who couldn’t afford those loans, and now all those loans are going bad.
The reason it’s racist is because BEFORE the CRA, banks often “redlined” communities and simply wouldn’t loan money to certain neighborhoods- neighborhoods that were almost always populated by racial minorities.
In other words, if Congress (and Barney Frank) hadn’t forced the banks to loan money to those damn darkies, none of this would have happened.
That’s the argument, anyway.
There’s a couple of big problems with that argument, though. First of all, the CRA specifically says that banks don’t have to take on any more RISK when they issue those loans than would be normal.
In other words, it’s not like the CRA law dictated that banks loan money at the same interest rates to people with lousy credit records as they do to people with good credit records. CRA did NOT force banks to loan to risky people; it only said “if you loan to someone with a 700 credit score in one neighborhood, you can’t refuse to loan to someone with the same score based strictly on them living in a different neighborhood.”
(Assuming, of course, that down payments and loan amounts and home value and so forth is all the same.)
The OTHER big fact about the CRA is this: Loans made under that act actually have performed BETTER than the average mortgage.
The majority of the subprime loans were NOT made through banks under the CRA! They were made via mortgage brokers and alternative lenders, whose business went like gangbusters through the 90s and early 00′s. Those types of lenders are not subject to the CRA.
Here’s a quote from a terrific (although hard to read) article talking about this:
(Facts are a real pain in the ass, aren’t they?)
The reality is that banks that were subject to the CRA actually tended to make better loans and those loans haven’t been failing at high rates- in fact, they’re failing at lower rates than the mortgage market as a whole.
From that same article:
So please take that “Barney Frank created the mortgage crisis” argument and throw it away. It’s a lie. The reality is that the mortgage crisis was created by both Congress AND the President, going back through President Bush and even to President Clinton.
The real creation of the mortgage crisis was the argument that we don’t need government regulation. When we massively deregulated the financial markets, a bunch of people started taking advantage of that and making horribly risky, stupid loans, and they based a ton of other financial instruments on those loans.
I don’t think the economy is entirely GWB’s fault… but our reaction to the problem, and allowing it to get this far (there WERE plenty of predictions that the crap was about to hit the fan for the past several years) IS his fault.
January 21st, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Oh yeah, another thing…. CRA was passed and signed in 1977. Barney Frank wasn’t elected until 1981. All these subprime loans that have been tanking left and right weren’t made until the mid-to-late 90s and later.
Stupid facts, getting in the way of a perfectly good argument. Dang it!
January 21st, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Geez, BEB, ur a lot smarter than you look!
January 21st, 2009 at 1:42 pm
In 1995, the Clinton administration revised the CRA to increase pressure on banks to make more loans to risky borrowers. In 1997, the first pool of subprime mortgages was securitized (by Bear Stearns!).
The law regulating Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was rewritten to reduce their capital requirements, meaning they would become riskier. Some critics were concerned about the risk, but here is what Congressman Barney Frank had to say at the time (So I mis-spoke. It’s not totally Mr. Frank’s fault, but here are his words. Yes facts do get in the way sometimes):
“These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. “The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.” [New York Times, September 11, 2003 ] Uh…wrong!!
At the height of the real estate boom, the United States set record home ownership rates. Politicians, including President Bush, bragged about their success at getting Americans into their own homes. As recently as August 2007, the President bragged that he was helping Americans get homes with lower down payments and higher loan limits. He also signed a law making it easier for homeowners to walk away from their mortgage obligations. So I mis-spoke. It’s not totally Mr. Frank’s fault.
Would more regulation have reduced the number of bad loans made? Most likely, more regulation would have increased the problem.
January 21st, 2009 at 1:50 pm
So…..
I decided to wait until I asked, but are we back on the greenbook yet?
January 21st, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Oops..forgot this:
BEB says: It’s a vaguely racist argument. The suggestion is that the Community Reinvestment Act- a law passed by Congress- forced banks and mortgage lenders to loan money to people who couldn’t afford those loans, and now all those loans are going bad.
The reason it’s racist is because BEFORE the CRA, banks often “redlined” communities and simply wouldn’t loan money to certain neighborhoods- neighborhoods that were almost always populated by racial minorities.
I don’t buy your racism argument. Yes redlining is wrong, but banks cannot loan money to those who cannot afford it and expect to stay in business. They have a responsibility not only to their shareholders, but to those they loan money not to put them in over their head – so they lose their homes later – because that, my friend, would be a racist thing to do.
January 21st, 2009 at 1:55 pm
excuse me.
I decided to wait until *some time has passed before* I asked, but are back on the greenbook yet?
January 21st, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Cut the management ranks in half, NOW! The reality is that every FLM in the nation could call in sick tomorrow, and guess what? It would transparent to the aviation community. If every controller called in can you say the same?
$160k a year for a FLM in a Z “working” 8 hours of traffic a month should be criminal.
January 21st, 2009 at 2:16 pm
“$160k a year for a FLM i”n a Z “working” 8 hours of traffic a month should be criminal.
Amen to that brother!
January 21st, 2009 at 3:07 pm
I get that a lot.
Yeah Right… you’ve conveniently ignored a couple of things. First of all, Fannie and Freddie aren’t banks, and thus they are not covered by the CRA.
More importantly, you’re ignoring the fact that loans made by banks under CRA aren’t going bad. In fact, they have a lower default rate than the average mortgage.
In other words, CRA doesn’t hurt; it HELPS. CRA does NOT require banks to lessen or lower their credit scores or ratings. It does NOT require banks to loan money to people with lousy credit scores, or make subprime loans, or make interest-only loans, or make negative-amortization loans.
It simply says you can’t redline based on physical location. A bank can keep its loan criteria exactly the same for every neighborhood, but it can’t exclude a neighborhood.
CRA is not the problem. The problem is that there were NO regulations and NOBODY was standing up and stopping the massive numbers of outright BS loans that were being made.
However, CRA didn’t cause the problem, because the majority of loans that are bad weren’t made under CRA. CRA loans are performing as well or better than the rest of the mortgage market. CRA is not the problem, period.
January 21st, 2009 at 5:46 pm
Oh yeah, a couple more thoughts…
Apparently you’re wrong on this one, because all kinds of financial institutions did exactly that- loaned money (or bought loans, or bought securitized loans, etc) that were tied to mortgages that people couldn’t afford, and those institutions are sharing hundreds of billions of dollars intended to STOP them from going out of business! (The wisdom of this action, we can debate later.)
The biggest point here is this: It’s not so much an anti-Bush, pro-Obama or anti-Republican, pro-Democrat kind of thing. The reality is that it wasn’t CRA that created this mess. The loans that are going bad weren’t, as a general rule, initiated by banks that are regulated by CRA; they were initiated by non-regulated (or far-less-regulated) companies and financial institutions.
The reality is that it’s a debate about how much regulation we actually need in the financial sector. Since it’s so important, and since we’ve seen demonstrated (multiple times) that deregulation inevitably leads to excessive greed and the People getting screwed, doesn’t it make sense that we need to be realistic about regulating these kinds of things?
Regulation did not create the financial crisis. I’m not anti-deregulation because it’s a Bush position; I’m anti-Bush because he holds that position. Fortunately, the amount of damage he can do is now pretty much done, and it’s time to dig out from what the deregulators have wrought.
January 21st, 2009 at 6:14 pm
The comment I enjoyed most from the 2002 GAO report:
Air Traffic Control: FAA Needs to Better Prepare for Impending Wave of Controller Attrition. http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d02591.pdf
can be found on page 8 of the executive summary:
“Regarding GAO’s concern about FAA’s preparedness for the future, the (FAA)
officials remarked that FAA’s ability to meet its past goals is an indication of
its ability to meet future needs, and that there is nothing to indicate that its
successful performance will not continue in the future.”
This comment from an FAA official who probably had nothing to do but sit on his ass and draw a paycheck at the time, since the FAA did little or no hiring in the years leading up to 2002. This agency still has its head up its ass as we continue to make little or no progress in training a replacement workforce, until we simply close the doors and turn out the lights when we all retire in just a few short years. Good luck congress. I hope you can learn to control traffic.
January 21st, 2009 at 6:29 pm
>One, the Agency had already reneged on its
>agreement(s) with NATCA about controller staffing…
>long before the IWRs. There were supposed to have
>15,606 controllers onboard in 2003…but as of 2008 –
>five years later, they’re still 300 short of that
>number (having never reached that number at all).
From the very 2006 Admin Fact Book that you linked:
FY04-17,070
FY05-16,645
FY06-16,596
January 21st, 2009 at 6:31 pm
Yeah, Right… said:
She said the entire country , not just organized labor. But the perspective in which she is writing is from a controller’s, and it is inclusive.
How interesting that you came to the conclusions you did from my statement. Not once did I mention money in my post, nor was I thinking of money when I wrote it. Even upon re-reading it, I can not find any evidence of the “whine” factor you reference.
Regardless of your cousin’s recent financial success, the rulings and policies of the FLRA, NLRB and DOL over the past 8 years have been a step backwards for organized labor and it’s entirely likely that his union will find that its job is more difficult in the future because of those rulings and policies.
You made an erroneous assumption about the perspective from which I wrote the statement under discussion. Controller, yes, as I am. Union activist, also. But my perspective from which I wrote also includes wife, mother, American and myriad other roles that are personally important to me.
I wrote the “suffers” comment from the viewpoint of a citizen of a nation that is on the brink of, if not already in, an economic depression. My personal opinion is that a great many are finding themselves lifting out of an emotional depression with the swearing in of a new POTUS – and not just those in this country.
I am a citizen who has seen her rights and those of her countrymen (and those of her nation’s world neighbors) under the Constitution abused and disregarded; a citizen who is aware of the growing number of families losing their homes to foreclosures; a citizen who has seen the respect for her country decline because of the actions and ideologies of our former POTUS; a citizen who has seen her Congress grind to a halt because of those same actions and ideologies and unable to move forward to do what needs to be done. I could go on, but perhaps you get the idea. Perhaps not.
FWIW, my definition of a true union activist is one who considers and works for the good of the whole, as well as the individual. That’s what the leader of this nation should be, don’t you think? Regardless of party, our leader should be a true Union activist.
January 21st, 2009 at 6:41 pm
FAA Guy said:
From the very 2006 Admin Fact Book that you linked:
FY04-17,070
FY05-16,645
FY06-16,596
And you were on the correct page (page 31); however the numbers you quote include supervisors and TMCs. Look at the line below those totals and you will find the figure(s) from my post – controllers who are bargaining unit employees.
January 21st, 2009 at 6:45 pm
Disregard the previous post. The correct number of bargaining unit employees is:
FY04-14736
FY05-14227
FY06-14206
I was incorrect in using the total ATCS workforce numbers.
January 21st, 2009 at 7:10 pm
Yeah Right: Take a gander at the following link …
http://www.moneymorning.com/2009/01/13/deregulation-financial-crisis/
it may educate you a bit …
Naw, that won’t happen!!
FaaGuy, I will admit, I’m impressed that you corrected yourself but now subtract most of the number of trainees that are not FPL to get the true number of controllers.
January 21st, 2009 at 8:19 pm
yeah, right: not to be too crude, but while your brother might be able to trade places with almost any FAA manager–I doubt your brother has what it takes to works traffic if he has the same mental rigor of, say, YOU!
January 21st, 2009 at 8:49 pm
Mr Right, if your brother wanted this job, he certainly had the same opportunity at it that I had.
January 21st, 2009 at 8:50 pm
So far it looks like “FAAguy” and “Yeah Right” have done nothing today but show their ass in this forum. Nice work, kids!
January 21st, 2009 at 9:34 pm
866 days?
That’s nothing.
I’ve been without a contract since forming a Union bargaining group in 2000.
That’s eight plus friggen years.
6 X 365 days
plus 2 366 day leap years
is 2,922 days within a term contract.
January 21st, 2009 at 9:35 pm
866 days?
That’s nothing.
I’ve been without a contract since forming a Union bargaining group in 2000.
That’s eight plus friggen years.
6 X 365 days
plus 2 366 day leap years
is 2,922 days without a term contract.
January 22nd, 2009 at 6:45 am
FAAGuy Says:
January 21st, 2009 at 6:45 pm
Disregard the previous post. The correct number of bargaining unit employees is:
FY04-14736
FY05-14227
FY06-14206
“I was incorrect in using the total ATCS workforce numbers”.
Kudos Faaguy for admitting your mistake!
Take the 14206 number and subtract trainees. If my facility (BTV) is any indication of the enormity of the problem the FAA has, we show 24 controllers on board: 12 are TRAINEES! 5 of the 12 CPC’s are eligible for immediate retirement.
January 22nd, 2009 at 6:48 am
You’ll have to excuse the wingnuts. It is quite impossible, in their minds, to reconcile how the Invisible Sky Daddy can love ‘Merica so much that it put St. Ronnie’s Big Dubya Jeebus in charge, only to witness how the idiot son of an asshole, a walking cesspoool of cognitive dissonance, could fail so spectacularly. Why, it’s almost like this god, who curiously never manifests and always needs money, is non-existant and only bandied about to the burgeouis as a distraction so that the Corporatists can fulfill their two goals:
1. To move wealth from the bottom and middle to the top.
2. To distract the populace so they do not realize that number one is happening.
If only Barney Frank didn’t like to whistle through a frequent urethra, Invisible Sky Daddy might let poor people pay their mortgages. Yes, Dubya is not responsible for anything that happened in the last eight years, but Pillow-Bitin’ Barney has brought the economy to it’s knees (and a few pages, too). When Wingnuts try to think without Insannity, Limpbaugh, or O’Leilley pumping at their six it can be so cute. Ask your “friend, the investment banker” about credit default swaps and their role in the current financial crisis. Get a clue.
Union busting is a 6 billion dollar a year business. Now why would the Corporatists invest so much money to ensure they never have to pay a living wage? What you consider whining by another poster is quite illustrative. Just like St. Rayguns and PATCO, decimating NATCA would be a feather in the Shrub’s propeller beanie.
Bottom line: The Smirking Chimp, the Saudi Boy Toy, the Horse-Fearin’, Brush-Clearin’, Connecticut Cowboy, the Fake Turkey Photo Op, the Worst Presnit Evah was in charge. The blame lays squarely at his tiny feet, abetted by his tiny, Scotch-addled medulla, and his even tinier glans. Good riddance you Constitution-shredding moron. Too bad that the Supreme Court destroyed democracy in 1999 and handed it to the Corporations. Facism, you ARE wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross. Is it proper to genuflect and salute? Let me ask Rick Warren.
January 22nd, 2009 at 6:54 am
rebuthole Says:
Mr Right, if your brother wanted this job, he certainly had the same opportunity at it that I had.
Amen! I have tried, but he just doesn’t seem to want to better himself. Though this career isn’t what it used to be, I’m still proud of what I do. Thanks for the debate!!
January 22nd, 2009 at 6:57 am
When your facts are all wrong, you are not debating.
January 22nd, 2009 at 7:50 am
I agree, kudos’s to FAAGUY.
While I often disagree with your points you always strive to make them accurate.
And….. since you have access to data that I don’t, (being a mere controller)
How about doing a little research and getting a true nationwide FPL controller headcount, NOT including management and NOT including trainees.
Then cross reference that number against the number of FPL controllers who are elligble to retire with a footnote to show the numbers for the next 10 years a year by year headcount of those going out via mandatory retirement due to age.
I’m sure this analysis has been done(and suppressed). It would be criminal of the upper management and HR ranks not to have done this.
A leak sure would be nice!!!
January 22nd, 2009 at 9:19 am
I think We The People’s first post saved the thread.
HOORAY!
January 22nd, 2009 at 6:42 pm
>I’m sure this analysis has been done(and suppressed).
>It would be criminal of the upper management and HR
>ranks not to have done this.
While I’m not sure of the suppressed part, I am sure it has been done too, but I can’t find it. I would like to see the results as well.