Do You Fly a Lot? Flying on a Summer Vacation? Your Safety Comes Last!

[IndyOp]

The new FAA contract that * appointees are trying to cram down the throats of air traffic controllers would drop starting salaries from $30K to $17K.

The contract could lead to experienced air traffic controllers quitting their jobs and could cause 12% increase in delays. The 'friendly skies' are already overcrowded. Do we want to allow the government to treat air traffic controllers unfairly and, as passengers, be less safe?

FAIR FAA is asking for calls to Congress and/or emails to Congress before June 5 -- support these bills:

House of Representatives (H.R. 4755 House Bill Targets)
Rep. Sue Kelly, R-N.Y., and Rep. Jerry Costello, D-Ill., introduced the "Federal Aviation Administration Fair Labor Management Dispute Resolution Act" on Feb. 15 to correct inequities in the current contract negotiating process between the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the National Air Traffic Controllers' union.

Senate (S.2201 Senate Bill Targets)
Senators Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, Barack Obama, D-Ill., Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., introduced a bill on Jan. 26 that would force the Federal Aviation Administration to engage in productive, good faith contract negotiations with its unions, including the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. The bill would deny the agency any ability to unilaterally impose a contract without the consent of Congress.

[OzarkDem]

1. Will do

Those salaries are ridiculously low.

[SammyWinstonJack]

2. !

:wow: That's all they make? :wow:

[IndyOp]

4. Starting salary - but yes - they want them to start at $17K

It seems to me the quality of employee and training will go downhill quickly with that starting salary -- who is going to be willing to invest time and $ in training when they'll be starting at such a low, low salary.

:shrug:

[dogday]

31. When someone has such responsibility,

you need to pay accordingly...

[DemoTex]

3. As an airline pilot/ALPA union person, I defer comment to MecurioATC.

MecurioATC is an active Air Traffic Controller, if my memory serves me correctly. MecurioATC or other DU ATCers need to chime in on this one. This must be a raw nerve issue with ATCers. Meanwhile, union or not, I am solidly with those that so expertly control the flow.

http://www.kingsmeadow.com/uploaded_images/0,1587,1696262_6,00-706087.jpg

[IndyOp]

6. I certainly don't know all the details - just heard about this on AAR -

from Thom Hartmann. In the midst of all of the terrorist fears whipped up by the GOP -- can't we use this issue to clobber them with?

It seems like a direct extention of Raygun's attack on PATCO in the early 1980's. Union-busting par excellance by the Federal Goverment.

[flyarm]

8. as a retired flight attendant , i will say what i said when Reagan

fucked the ATC..every airline crew in this country best shut this country down!!

we didn't do it then and i screamed we must... ..and it was systemic what happened to even the flight crews..salaries were cut ..we went to A/B salary structures..and it was all because we didn't shut this nation down with solidarity with the ATC,.and all unions suffered..it was the demise of all unions in this country..

my union (with a major airline) the F/A's didn't get a new contract for 7 years..we lost all bargaining power..

everyone in transportation should and must shut this country down if the ATC walks out !!

fly

[DemoTex]

13. SOS (Suspension of Service) .. I agree.

However, do you have any idea how many scabs now work in the airlines? Way too many. Scabs are shit. It sounds like trite union rhetoric, but it is an economic truth. Adam Smith's ideas of land, capital, and labor are long over-due another look. Especially labor and scab labor.

I have had the great satisfaction of checking a scab list and refusing an otherwise silver-tongue-devil my jump-seat. Union scabs never realize the pervasiveness of the scab-list. I still keep a list of the names of the fucking Eastern Air Lines scabs lest one might try to work as a plumber in my house.

VERB SAP you potential scabs. Verb fucking Sap!

Mac

[MercutioATC]

11. Present and accounted for! Thanks for posting this, IndyOp!

...and thank you, DemoTex...and everybody...for your support.


The crux of the matter is this:

The way things are written, if NATCA (our union) and the FAA are unable to agree on a contract, it goes to Congress for 60 days for resolution. If Congress chooses not to act, the FAA gets to impose a contract unilaterally.

Here's what you're not being told...the FAA wants $2 BILLION in concessions from us over the next five years. We're not GM...we're talking about $2B in concessions from a workforce of about 14,400 employees. Our counter offer? $1.4 BILLION in concessions. Yes, a labor group of less than 15k employees agreed to give up $1.4B over five years. That's over 93 thousand dollars per employee.

The FAA also wants complete control over our schedules and leave without restriction. Have a vacation planned in Hawaii? Already bought tickets? Too bad...the FAA would be able to cancel your vacation time if it wished.

They've requested we work split shifts. Come in from 8:00am until noon. Go home until 2:00pm. Work again from 2:00pm until 6:00pm.

...and they want to the power to unilaterally reassign our pay ratings. I work at a facility rated at an ATC-12 (the highest level...we work about 3 million planes per year). Under the new contract that they'd impose, they'd be able to reclassify my facility however they saw fit...say, down to an ATC-8 (which would represent a 40-45% pay cut).

Remember, this is what happens because all the FAA has to do is cry "impasse" during a contract negotiation and they get to impose a contract...maybe I'm being too critical, but what incentive did they have to bargain in good faith in the first place? They're farther ahead if they just refuse to negotiate.


This bill does the following:

It requires collective bargaining (no change). If impasse is declared, the matter goes to Congress for 60 days (no change). If Congress declines to act, the dispute goes to arbitration rather than letting the FAA simply impose a contract (that's the change).

We're not looking for Congress to "save" us and give us a fantastic contract. We're asking for a change that would prevent the FAA from doing what it has been doing...refusing to bargain in good faith so they can unilaterally impose a contract.


There's a lot more to say, but this is getting long enough. Questions? Ask me here or in PMs.


Thanks again for your concern.

:)

[DemoTex]

17. Thanks MecurioATC. Perfect timing!

That was so smooth that folks are going to think we PLANNED it! Folks, we did not. I took the chance of MecurioATC reading my post, and he did. Read his. $2 BILLION in concessions. I think ATC might be fucked worse than pilots. What happens when both groups give it up? At the same time? While you are in a Boeing 737 on the way to Boston to see Aunt Tilley?

Mac

[MercutioATC]

20. I'm still up and I just happened to read it.

I've posted on this before, but nobody really thinks about air traffic controllers...and we usually like it that way. If we're doing our jobs, you shouldn't even know we're there...but rest assured, we are.

I guess most of my frustration isn't about the pay cuts or the ridiculous schedules...we're only 14,000 or so people. It's about the fact that most of us know the system could work better, but nobody will listen to us.

It's also about the death of the American union.

I'll be the first to admit that union power, like any power, can be abused. That's not the issue here. Unions were established to protect workers from owners...and there are still one hell of a lot more workers than owners in this country. The nature of business (or a government agency that's "run like a business") is to minimize costs. There are a very few businesses that realize that workers really ARE a company's most valuable asset, but most have either forgotten that or never knew it in the first place. The simple fact is that, especially with a friendly government, it's easier for owners to reduce costs by taking money from workers than fixing problems. That's where we stand.

Whether you're in a union or not, you'd do well to remember this. You're not an owner, you're a worker. Union or not, we're all going to suffer when the owners win. I'm certainly not asking anybody to protect my paycheck...I'm asking you to stand up for fair treatment. You can choose to start with www.fairfaa.com . You can start by bringing a couple of cups of coffee to those picketers outside your local grocery store. You can write you your Congressmen and demand your rights.

We're on a fast track to the 1890's...all I ask it that you think about that. Where would you be without unions and the worker protections they brought to every worker, union and non-union alike?

[Gormy Cuss]

30. Nobody cares about unions anymore

except the people in them. We can thank Saint Reagan and his successful assault on your union.
We are on a fast track to the 1890s. Unions are to blame for all the lazy Americans who won't do certain jobs, who won't put in that extra effort and uncompensated time to get the job done and increase the profits, and who fail to take ownership of funding their health care and retirement. Unions gave workers these silly ideas. (mandatory sarcasm alert inserted here.)

If I live to be 100 I will never refer to National Airport by any other name.

[libnnc]

48. kick...my partner's an ATCer

I tried several times a couple of weeks ago to start threads on this and nobody really cared much. They sank like a rock.

[Neecy]

53. This is shocking

The pay concessions are terrible, but split shifts? Good god, isn't the job stressful enough?

A two-hour split means, in most areas, you don't have enough time to go anywhere or do anything, so what you end up doing is sitting around at work for two hours with nothing to do. It's a 10 hour day at 8 hours of pay, with a very dull stretch planned in the middle. That's just shit.

You guys shouldn't give up a damn thing. It's one of the most difficult, stressful jobs in the world and I'd tell them to go f**k themselves.

You totally have my support.

[Cameron27]

41. Would the ALPA and the airlines themselves,

publically support the controllers? I don't know how the union contracts read, but as just a flyer, this scares the hell out of me. I was an oncology RN, and while our salaries were significantly higher than the controllers, I quit when the our union couldn't put a stop to the drastic staffing cuts that the hospital admin. enforced. Administering chemotherapy "on the run" just not acceptable.

[lonestarnot]

5. duck and run!

[lindisfarne]

7. Why don't we just hire non-US citizens and pay them minimum wage

(less during training)?

[flyarm]

9. yes and make sure they can't speak english..so we can have

air bumper planes!!

if this country can not pay for the best to guide our aircraft and protect the american peoples lives while going 35,000 ft in a tube..well then we get what we deserve!

seems little lord pissy pants has this country on the verge of bankruptsy ...so fuck safety ..right american people??

fuck give us another war in iran..and fuck U.S. safety...:sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :rant: :rant: :rant:

fed up here...hey freepers and conservatives..your number is up..get in line..you go first!!

this is exactly why i took early retirement!...and am damn glad i did!

fly

[IndyOp]

10. Actually, I was thinking we could just build prisons at the airports --

On the land no one wants to live on because they hear airplanes going over all the time? And then we could get prisoners to do the Air Traffic Control jobs -- they'd be locked up in the ATC tower or in the prison at all times. :sarcasm:

Trust me - I am not making fun of your post, just sharing a very cynical moment.

[MercutioATC]

22. Hey, the FAA would call that creative problem-solving...

Seriously, absolutely no offense taken :)

[MercutioATC]

12. We don't even have to pay minimum wage...outsource to India.

;)

[lindisfarne]

14. That's true. How often to air traffic controllers really *need* to look

out to the sky to know what's going on (and we can sacrifice any safety gained at that point because we're saving $$$). All the info. can just be sent over the internet to India -- with only 10's of milliseconds delay -- except when the internet is really slow.

[DemoTex]

18. Washington Tower, US Air 456 at the CIA inbound on the river approach.

Tower: US Air 456 cleared to land runway 17, wind 190/24 gust 30. Follow the Delta MD-80

US Air 456: Roger, 456. Cleared to land 17. Delta in sight over Key Bridge.

Tower: Roger 456, can you slow to approach speed?

US Air 456: Our pleasure (background: "gear down, flaps 40/slats, landing checklist"). (CVR "There he is .. outer bridge not the Key! Slow more.. quick .. right down to bug plus 10).

US Air 456: What's Delta doing, tower? This is too close, we are on the go. US Air 456 going around.

Tower: OK US Air 456, climb to 3000 feet turn right to 270. Keep Delta in sight. He's landing. We'll bring you around again. Keep it at 210 if you can, sir.

[MercutioATC]

21. Dude, don't DO that to me....

...I know it's silly, but my BP shoots up about 20 points just imagining this...

:)

[lindisfarne]

23. But hey, we're importing nurses who don't speak well any of the major

languages spoken in the US because we don't want to pay our own citizens what the market is demanding - how many people will die because something is misunderstood, or some chicken scratch not read (difficult enough for a native speaker to decipher it at times).

I guess some deaths are just the price to pay for cost saving! Outsource those air traffic control jobs to India! Big corporations need to make more profit! The government needs to cut taxes for the extremely wealthy!

[Cameron27]

44. I don't believe this is happening.

I don't think that anyone can possibly imagine the stress that you experience without actually doing the job and I can't believe that your pay scale is so damned low already and going LOWER???

I'll email my congressmen, but I moved to AZ, so it'll just be dumped.

edited for wording

[MercutioATC]

45. Here's our side of the story (our rebuttal to Congress):

(warning - it's a PDF)

http://www.natca.org/assets/Documents/mediacenter/NATCARebuttaltoFAAs-Congressional-Contract-Submission.pdf

[Cameron27]

59. Crap, wish I waited before I sent my email.

The NATCA nails the FAA with excoriating detail. I'm sending another, but it's going to take me awhile to get all the info properly reduced for my bubblehead congressman....(Hayworth of AZ)

I'll email to the dangerous bubbleheads Kyl and McCain at the same time.

Good luck to you.

(I'm wondering if the FAA is rife with insanity, or is just completely morally bankrupt.)

[MercutioATC]

61. Thanks for your efforts.

We need all the help we can get.

As for your question, "I'm wondering if the FAA is rife with insanity, or is just completely morally bankrupt." the answer is yes...

To give you an example, a woman who works at my facility has ongoing health problems. Because of this, she has exhausted all of her vacation time and sick leave. The government has a leave-without-pay (LWOP) program to deal with these situations (if approved by management, you can still take days off if needed, you just don't get paid for them). The woman in question asked for a day of LWOP to go to a doctor's appointment to get test results to find out if she had cancer.

However, the FAA seems to think that LWOP is being used too much and has encouraged managers to only grant it when necessary. The manager of my facility denied her request. After the local president of our union spoke with him and again explained that this woman HAD to go to the doctor to find out if she had cancer, the manager relented...somewhat. He allowed her to take 1/2 day of LWOP. She had to go to a 9:00am doctor's appointment to find out if she had cancer and then come to work for the second half of her shift from 11:00am until 3:00pm.

She does have cancer.

Is that insane or morally bankrupt? Yes.

[Cameron27]

63. Insanity amoung the morally bankrupt

There doesn’t seem to be any escape from these venomous management twits masquerading as human beings.

I came into work one day just as our nurse manager was berating a nursing assistant for taking too many sick days after her one of her chemotherapy sessions. I, along with several other outraged nurses, verbally pounced on the beast but she never apologized.

These people make the world bleak.

The email came out pretty decently, and I sent it to the three sons of Satan from AZ.

Please write more posts with any developing news. The consequences of the FAA’s plan succeeding will be everyone’s worse nightmare.

[Buns_of_Fire]

54. I don't even UNDERSTAND some of the jargon, and it scares me!

Whatever the pilots and ATC people are being paid... it isn't enough. It's not like you can just pull off to the side of the road if things go bad...

[MercutioATC]

57. I'm an "ATC jargon" expert...ask away...

:)

[Metta]

15. Done. Thanks.

Important.

[Gloria]

16. Thom Hartman commented that they'd be earning what a manager

of a Burger King earns......

[flyarm]

19. so reassuring ..don't you think??? soooooooooo just when does

Mr. and Mrs. America wake the fuck up???????????

tell you what..the ATC guys who were taped by the FAA on 9/11 by that criminal from the FAA broke up the tapes and put them in many garbage cans ..need to go public with what they said on those tapes..they need to get on network TV..and blow these fuckers out of the water!!

they need to directly tell the American people that those tapes were mandatory to be kept as evidence and the FAA committed a crime to this nation..the ATC guys need to get down right dirty ...and in their fucking faces over at the FAA!

then point out publically that little lord pissy pants appointee NTSB Chairwoman Marion Blakey said on NY news after the crash of American Airlines Flight 587 that the pilots must have known there was a problem as they dumped their fuel...well that A300 had no capability to dump fuel! oh and Pataki repeated what she said for 3 days on national news...

yes ATC guys you need to play dirty with the truth about these fuckers!!

fly

[IndyOp]

24. Kick! Come On DU - I think this would matter to you...

I don't fly and it matters to me!

:kick:

[IndyOp]

25. Kick!

[Jacobin]

26. Why?

Why in the fork would the government do something like this to professionals who have one of the most demanding and critical jobs in the country? The burn out rate is high. They have to make critical judgments affecting hundreds of lives in a split second, over and over and over for hours at a time.

The bastards in charge of this country ALL need to be in forking jail.

This is utterly insane. Utterly insane.

[IndyOp]

28. Why? To continue busting unions while doing their filthy rich friends

a good turn. If I remember correctly - from back when Raygun was taking similar action - the Air Traffic Controllers cannot - by law - go on strike because their jobs are critical to national safety.

Read MercutioATC's posts further up this thread to see how blatant a theft this is. The union already agreed to HUGE cuts, but the FAA is just busting their balls - they are doing it because the powerful are sick with power and think they can get away with it.

[Jacobin]

38. This thing is wrong on so many levels

Endangering the lives of the traveling public for idiotic reasons.

I will be soooo glad when the thugs in congress and the WH are kicked out of office

[LSK]

27. YOU CANT EVEN LIVE ON 30K!!!!!

CUT IT TO 17K???????????????????????

:grr: :nuke: :grr:

[Roland99]

29. $30k is certainly livable wages around here. That's $15/hr. $9/hr would

allow one to eek out a meager subsistence here but that's still just barely above $17k/yr. That's what daycare workers are making!

[LSK]

34. not in Chicago

[dysfunctional press]

35. i guess that depends on your definition of living.

there are plenty of people in/around chicago who survive just fine on 30K or even less.

[pnwmom]

58. And do they work in jobs with that much stress and responsibility?

Other than teachers, of course!

[Roland99]

46. That's why I said "around here"

[woo me with science]

32. Is that accurate?

Are their salaries really THAT low?

How much do they go up, and how quickly? Does anyone know what MOST air traffic controllers make?

That seems way too low for such a critical job.

[MercutioATC]

36. Yes, it's accurate.

The FAA wants to lower starting salaries to about $17k.

The training program is 4-5 years and salary after that is based (loosely) on how busy your individual facility is. Lower-level facilities pay a fully-certified controller about $50k/year.

I'm at one of the handful of top-level facilities in the country (we work about 3 million planes per year...that's over 8,000 planes per day) and I've got 15 years of seniority. That puts me in the top 10% of the salary range. I make about $130k/year. The vast majority of controllers make nowhere near as much.

The contract that the FAA is trying to impose would cut our pay 10%-20% and freeze it there. The Presidential raise that EVERY government employee gets every January? We wouldn't get it. Cost of living increases? Nope. ...and that's only the beginning. The FAA's contract also allows them to reclassify facilities at whim with no outside approval process. I'm at an ATC-12 facility. The FAA could reassign it as an ATC-8 facility if it chose (and cut my pay to about $72k per year).

Our air traffic control system works for one reason...our huge experience base. Controllers retire. Controllers die. They don't leave to pursue other careers. What kind of experience base will we have left if we pay the same as a run of the mill middle-management job? What caliber of employee will we attract if they have to quit their current job and start over again at $17k per year?


The bigger issue, however, is collective bargaining in general. We controllers aren't looking for people to call Congress to save our pay. We're trying to preserve good-faith collective bargaining.

Under the current system, the FAA can declare an impasse in negotiations at any time (which they did). Once this happens, Congress gets 60 days to decide the matter...or they can choose to just ignore it (which they did). After 60 days (which will be June 5th) the FAA then gets to impose a contract. That being the process, what incentive does the FAA have to ever bargain in good faith? It's actually in their best interest to refuse to negotiate, declare impasse, and impose whatever contract they like.

This bill would change only one thing. If Congress decided to not act on the contract, the matter would go to a federal arbitrator instead of allowing the FAA to impose a contract. That's all. It's not a payday for controllers, just a way to ensure that the FAA bargains in good faith.

[woo me with science]

39. Thanks for the information.

This is outrageous. And scary.

[MercutioATC]

42. I added to the above post (#36)

I don't want this to sound like the money is the most important issue here...it's not. The real issue is that the FAA actually has a disincentive to bargain in good faith under the current process. All this bill does is provide an incentive for them...

[elehhhhna]

33. 8.50 per hour for one of the most stressful jobs in the world? Please.

They already have sucky hours, must be willing to relo, and burn out in 10 years.

WHAT UTTER BULLSHIT.

[MercutioATC]

37. Wanna talk about "sucky hours"? Here's my work schedule...

Saturday I work from 3:00pm until 11:00pm
Sunday I work from 1:00pm until 9:00pm
Monday I work from 7:00am until 3:00pm

...and Tuesday I work from 6:00am until 2:00pm, go home for 8 hours, come back into work at 10:00pm Tuesday night and work until 6:00am Wednesday morning.


...not very conducive to either a family life or anything resembling a sane sleep schedule.

[elehhhhna]

43. No joke. I' mthenkful my husband didn't go for an ATC job

back in the mid-80's...he lost all interest after what Raygun did to that union, and BECAME A DEM OVER IT, too (woo hoo).

[porphyrian]

40. The government doesn't care about us or our safety.

It doesn't even need our votes any more.

[Divernan]

47. Grossly insulting to ATCs & terrifying to a frequent flyer.

Individual ATCs have responsibilities for tens of thousands of lives every day. The stress is so intense - I can't think of another job with which to compare it. It takes a very intelligent and psychologically strong person to handle such stress. The last thing you need in that occupation is management barking at your heels, constantly trying to make your job even more stressful. That split shift proposition is so outrageous and impractical - it would double your commuting costs, for one thing. If anyone ever needed a work day with a couple of (relatively) slower hours, its an ATC. And a starting salary of $17,000? That's LESS than a corporation or major law firm pays an inexperienced, brand new secretary!

I was just thinking as my plane landed on a nice clear day, that it was safer because pilots could see great distances. But planes are landing later and later/after dark in some airports, and that always makes me aware that the Air Traffic Controller is the person protecting me from a midair collision.

Very upsetting story

K&R

[MercutioATC]

49. This was one of my favorite ads...

...when they were trying to privatize us.

(warning - PDF)

http://www.natca.org/assets/Documents/mediacenter/RollCallAdFinalLowRes41905.pdf

[IndyOp]

50. NATC was claiming that the air traffic controller's union's actions were

really the result of people who wanted to 'privatize' the air traffic control system - when what the ATC really wanted was to prevent ATCs from getting a fair contract?

Today, air traffic operators from foreign countries are trying to convince Congress to privatize your air traffic control system the way they have privatized theirs.

That's not the best way to protect our nation's interests.

Risking the public's safety by putting air traffic control up for sale should never be an option.

America has the safest air traffic control system in the world. Why in the world would we want to change it?

[MercutioATC]

51. It's an ad from last year when they were trying to privatize us.

Public amd Congressional outcry was too great, though.

Now, they're just trying to impose a contract...different situation.

[Divernan]

52. "America's ATCs workover half of the world's air traffic" _Wow!

And provides the number of 64 million take-offs and landings each year in US. "Canada, on the other hand, guides almost as many aircraft as Cleveland."

Very powerful ad.

[Ioo]

55. Lots of Dems support this.. Why?

[MercutioATC]

56. Because they're not rabidly anti-union???

All this bill does is require arbitration in the event of an impasse, instead of management being able to unilaterally impose a contract.

Only the most anti-union legislators wouldn't support it...

[VolcanoJen]

60. Ginormous Kick

Fascinating and frightening thread.

:dem:

[in_cog_ni_to]

62. Next up: Outsourcing traffic controllers from Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria,

United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

Air Traffic Controller's Unions? Who needs unions when you can outsorce?:eyes: