The FAA Follies

I mentioned yesterday that it seems to me that there have been a higher number of individuals leaving the controller ranks to join management than usual.  Outside of those on the B pay scale wanting to get onto the A scale like they were originally planning on (and I really don’t get that from an activist’s point of view), I personally can’t understand why anyone would do so after being on the receiving end of management’s union-busting tactics and metaphorical boots on our necks.  Then I received an unexpected phone call from a former coworker who’d become a supervisor before the IWRs – someone who long ago was a NATCAvist.  And I heard the union-busting spiel.

• “NATCA should be encouraging people to move into management, not holding them back.”
• “Make the change from the other side.”
• “You’re too smart to just be a controller.”
• “You should already be a manager at your own facility.”
• “Other than the pay, what’s really so bad about the white book?”
• “Management is just taking back its rights.”
• “Anyone who has been a controller for more than 15 years without moving up is a bitter, mean individual.”
• “The best way to set yourself up for a contractor’s job after retirement is to have some DC experience.”
• “You gotta do what’s right financially for your family.”

There was more, but you get the idea.  It was difficult to hear such nonsense coming from someone I had once respected.  It was more difficult to realize how many people are accepting that nonsense as so-called reasonableness and jumping ship.

A couple of personal thoughts on the spiel:

I see no reason to accept anything management has to say that includes the phrase “NATCA should be doing” as anything but self-serving.

On the other side, I wouldn’t have the protections, even reduced as they are under the IWRs, that I have as a bargaining unit employee.

On the other side, I wouldn’t have the freedom to speak my mind and make those changes.  Remember St. Louis?  Management’s way or the highway?

“Just be a controller” really does say it all about how they see us, doesn’t it?

There is a great deal of concern that Obama’s support of workers in this country will lead to our economic downfall.  Business groups maintain the Employee Free Choice Act is an affront to democratic principles and hurt job growth.  Even lawyers are weighing in expecting greater business in the coming years.

Big business seems to think that their own employees making a living wage, receiving decent benefits and having a real say in their workplace is undemocratic and unreasonable.  No one knows better what their job entails than the worker.  No one is more invested personally than a worker who believes their employer truly considers their input valuable.  Why wouldn’t an employer want to keep their employees safe in the workplace and provide protective equipment?  Why wouldn’t an employer want their employees to have decent health insurance?  Why wouldn’t an employer wish to invest in its best, most useful resource to keep them in prime operating condition?

One of our new hires recently made a comment to me that made me feel old…very old.  From what I can gather (and I have no idea why anyone would deliberately pass along such erroneous information), someone had told said new hire that the green book had been around since the PATCO days.  New hire was also told that they were not entitled to union representation in the workplace until the one-year probationary period had expired; which is untrue, we just can’t grieve removals within the probationary period.

New hire obviously received the correct information from me.  But it reinforced my belief that we need to be doing more to teach the newest generation of workers and potential union activists of their rights and what tricks management and management wannabes will use to undermine the union’s purpose.

Big business is afraid of the perceived power of unions.  Unions don’t hire and fire; they only attempt to ensure that the employer applies the same, objective criteria to everyone while taking steps to ensure workers stay safe and receive a living wage.  That really isn’t an unreasonable goal and shouldn’t be an issue for an employer, should it?

Obama’s election created a collective sigh of relief for labor proponents.   Hope is on the immediate horizon.  But the war is not over; it will never be over.  The battles may become non-existent or easier for a time, but the war will be simmering below the surface and we should always be prepared for a sneak attack.  So long as big business believes that profit and their own self-perceived sense of power are more important than the safety and well-being of its workers, there is always the risk of being out-flanked.

This is extremely important for us controllers to realize and guard against.  Look at our history thus far.  PATCO, building management’s ranks, strike, NATCA, building management’s ranks, IWRs, building management’s ranks.  All these new supervisors are being indoctrinated in the same self-defeating style of management that PATCO struck against and that caused NATCA to form.  NATCA continues to rally against it, but our veteran ranks are retiring.  A lot of that fire and knowledge isn’t being passed on to our newest generation.

If we learn anything from the IWRs, it is that the resentment in the FAA management ranks against controllers is alive and well and being taught to their newest generation.  Our newest controller generation needs to understand, deep to their bones, that as bad as it is now, it can and will get worse if they’re not prepared enough, strong enough, unified enough to stand against it.  Complacency and the expectation that someone else will take care of it for them will not work.  They need to remain ever vigilant.  Those veterans who are still left need to take the time and expend the energy to pass along, not only our ATC knowledge, but our knowledge of  labor management relations, dirty tricks management uses, and the rhetoric they spout.

I bet if BEB could figure out a way to get this series to automatically post again in 10 or 15 years, the basic premises I’ve mentioned will be as applicable then as they are today.  What say you?

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…