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Well, I think the FAA controllers had some legitimate gripes. Maybe not all the gripes were legitimate, but many were. I do not know if their problems were ever addressed. They had a no strike clause. The PATCO president was an idiot. I don't believe that a guy who was not a controller himself, had any understanding at all, of what it was like to be one.

What people described as slow downs, was sometimes just that. Much of the time, it was just the controllers going strictly by the book and not cutting any corners at all. Working heavies the way I did, we had our wake turbulence separation requirements. I wouldn't run you closer than 10 miles behind an airliner, for spacing and wake turbulence both. When I was in Vietnam, we didn't have any wake turbulence criteria. I saw a Pilatus Porter take off right behind a C-130. The Porter was turned 90 degrees by the wake turbulence. The pilot did a great job to keep from crashing, but that experience stayed with me the rest of my career. We even had wake turbulence requirements between heavies. The pilots did not always like that, so it was always an adversarial thing. Officers don't like being told what to do by enlisted people. Finally, in disgust, I was able to retire at the first possible moment, and never looked back at all. There was some respect between UASF pilots and controllers, but not very much. Now, my son plans to become an Air Force officer next year. I just told him not to expect me to call him sir.

Oops, long rant, but I have been thinking about this for decades now.

:-)

There's a lot of comments I could make about the differences between USAF controlling back then, and the FAA's mentality of controlling back then.
USAF controllers, especially with experience from Osan AB, ROK TRACON, knew well before the PATCO strike about the benefits of using "FLOW CONTROL" and using "COORDINATOR CONTROLLERS" that the FAA was NOT familiar with at the beginning of the strike.
The USAF "Strike Busters" IMMEDIATELY implemented both techniques into the FAA and that started most of the delays being transferred from "Holding Patterns" over fixes, to "Ground Delays" on the ramp, and "Controlled Departure Times".
At USAF bases, it was common place for "Coordinators" between the "Arrival Controller" and the "Tower Local Controller" to build holes for departures by telling the "Radar Coordinator" to run 3 arrivals as close together as possible, and then to leave a 15 mile hole for departures, so as to get 3 or 4 flights of fighters airborne.
These control techniques are still being used today in the FAA and the USAF, but the FAA tends to want to give priority to arrivals over departures, and sometimes forgets about the departure side of moving traffic.