NATCA Nation Seething With Anger and Frustration As FAA Bullies Employees With Imposed Work Rules
Measured as a seismic event in the history of NATCA, the Federal Aviation Administration’s Labor Day weekend imposition of work rules on the air traffic controller bargaining unit ranks somewhere around 9.0 on the Richter Scale.
Unhappy, disillusioned and morale-sapped controllers nationwide have lost respect for their employer and have been prevented from simply coming to work, enjoying their career passion and feeling good about the hard work and dedication that goes into ensuring the world’s safest system. Instead, they are buried in an avalanche of new work rules – which they were never given a chance to ratify – that are creating confusion, anger and frustration and are leading more veteran controllers to retire sooner than they planned.
NATCA President Patrick Forrey said he shares the intensity of members’ emotions when it comes to the current state of their workplace.
“The anger and frustration concerning this ongoing travesty is evident in every discussion with the NATCA National Executive Board and every e-mail and phone conversation I have with members from all corners of the country,” Forrey said. “These are emotions characteristic of any unilateral change, especially one that would support actions from management officials upon dedicated and professional employees that can only be described as indecent, illogical and in some instances illegal."
“This atmosphere of frustration between employees and management cannot continue in an environment that is so critical to the safety and security of the national airspace system.”
No region has been spared the wrath of the FAA’s forced implementation and examples of extreme aggression toward employees and irrational application of the new work rules are rampant. Furthermore, the agency’s lowering of the pay bands has drastically cut the amount of dues money coming in to NATCA – a clear union-busting tactic – and the drastic pay cut for new hires has led hundreds of prospective hires to re-think and, in many cases, cancel their plans to purse a career in air traffic control, further jeopardizing the FAA’s ability to properly staff the system for the foreseeable future. In fact, NATCA has learned that the estimates of prospective controllers declining their FAA job offers is greater than 20 percent and many are waiting to see what transpires between the parties over the next couple of months.
“It is terribly unfortunate that the agency would impose work rules on an unwilling workforce and implement those rules in a manner that defies logic and human decency,” Forrey said. “This treatment begets grievances, ULPs (unfair labor practices) and lawsuits that require resources precious to both parties. More disheartening, the human costs will have a lasting effect on all of us in the years to come.”
The long-term NATCA labor relations goal is to stabilize the pendulum shift that has now swung too far toward the FAA’s desire to expand managerial rights. But Forrey made clear that while there is no quick fix to the current labor problems, NATCA members should remain hopeful.
“We have been here before and we have risen from the depths in the past,” he said. “Our goal now is to find that place in the middle that allows both parties to concentrate on the future of the system without ever having to deal with extreme pendulum swings again.”
