Reply #117: Yes they are ...

[gleaner]

As a former federal employee, who has enjoyed the attempts of various administrations to break our unions and reduce our working conditions to dirt, I have to say the two incidents are very similar. The Controllers were mainly striking because they needed shorter hours. They were getting so fatigued that they could not function and they were afraid that planes would start crashing.

Federal employees cannot strike. The unions can go to court on issues that affect them and that can take years sometimes. The leader of PATCO decided to take a risk and have the controllers walk out. Reagan fired them all and added the caveat that they could never work for the government again. That was later modified to say that they could not work as controllers again because Reagan violated federal labor law by forbidding reemployment entirely.

Then Reagan blithely hired the second tier controllers who had not done so well on the tests and other qualifying exercises that the controllers were required to excel at. Sure enough the planes began crashing more frequently than they had before.

Obama once said that Reagan was the president he most admired. It seems to me that he took a page right out of Reagan's playbook and got involved in a situation to further his own agenda at the expense of the people who actually have to live with his decision. He acted to everyone's detriment as he often does.