listen stooopid... THEY QUIT!!!
Posted on 12/14/2011 4:39:33 PM PST by mdittmar
Jim Morin was a former Air Force air traffic controller when he joined the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in 1977 and was assigned to one of the busiest airports in the nation, New York’s LaGuardia, where he became secretary-treasurer of the PATCO local.
But even as air traffic was growing and the air traffic control system was working at near capacity, the FAA was cutting staffing numbers and forcing controllers to work longer hours, especially in the spring and summer when thunderstorms would back planes up across the country.
We’d get hammered. So many planes and so few places to put them. It just wore you down, especially if you worked swing shift [3-11 p.m.]. The fatigue factor was huge and a lot of suggestions we made just fell on deaf ears.
In 1981, Morin says controllers knew they were risking their jobs when 12,000 went on strike after negotiations broke down. But they stuck together in solidarity. President Ronald Reagan followed through on his threat and fired the controllers and busted PATCO. That’s still reverberating today, says Morin.
The major ramification for organized labor today is that employers are no longer hesitant to go ahead and hire or threaten to hire replacement workers and workers and unions are very hesitant to use it [strike] now. As far as conservatives are concerned, they point to the strike and the firings as a shining moment in labor history.
Morin was part of a forum at the AFL-CIO today Washington. D.C., where Georgetown University associate history professor Joseph McCartin, author of the definitive book on the PATCO strike, Collision Course: Ronald Reagan, the Air Traffic Controllers, and the Strike That Changed America, explored the strike’s impact on the labor movement and its connection to the erosion of collective bargaining as a path for workers to get to and stay in the middle class.
“Never before,” says McCartin,
had the nation faced union busting on this scale…private-sector employers applauded his action and followed his example. It broke the moral barriers and constraints against replacing workers who strike. It made union-busting not only respectable, but kind of a litmus test for politicians.
Earlier this year, McCartin said, just before Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) was set to introduce his bill to eliminate the collective bargaining rights of public employees, Walker told a meeting of his advisors:
This is the last time we meet before we drop the bomb…Now it’s time to follow Reagan’s example.
New Jersey’s right-wing Gov. Chris Christie (R), says McCartin, calls Reagan’s firing of the controllers and busting of PATCO Reagan’s “most inspiring moment.”
Over the years, as more and more employers fired striking workers, the “power of collective action, the right to strike was undermined,” McCartin said.
By 2010, there were only 11 strikes involving 1,000 or more workers, compared with 222 such strikes in 1960—a 95 percent drop in walkouts. As the ability to successfully strike decreased, so did workers’ strength at the workplace and their numbers in unions.
That, he says, is a major factor in the growth of income inequality. “We used to look at collective bargaining as the bulwark of the middle class,” said McCartin. The inability to use collective bargaining’s most powerful tool—the strike— is a major factor in the growth of income inequality, he said.
Following the strike, Morin earned a law degree, served as Air Traffic Controllers (NATCA) general counsel and now worker at the FAA. Also on the panel today were former PATCO controller Elliot Simons and Kenneth Moffett, director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service at the time of the PATCO strike.
I remember so well the feeling, that we had a President who could not be afraid of the masses, the media or the mobs. It was a good time. I remember Larry King was on a Night Show, saying the President couldn’t do this...but Ronald Reagan did. Made one right proud to be an American.
Reagan explained to the country that PATCO could not legally go on strike.
He gave members a chance to go back to work.
PATCO double-dog dared Reagan to fire them.
Disestablish all public employee unions.
Correct. He was very clear. Go back to work or be fired. PATCO also didn’t get along with Carter either and were simply out for the easy buck.
Unfortunately for them they ran into the Perfect Storm. A law against federal workers striking and a President that actually believed in the rule of law.
Bye-bye PATCO.
listen stooopid... THEY QUIT!!!
In 1981, Morin says controllers knew they were risking their jobs when 12,000 went on strike after negotiations broke down. But they stuck together in solidarity. President Ronald Reagan followed through on his threat and fired the controllers and busted PATCO. That's still reverberating today, says Morin.Thanks mdittmar.
I was doing some work at the Cincinnati airport in the early to mid-1970’s (BTW, it is in Kentucky, not Ohio). There was a small, gated parking lot at the base of the tower. In it were more exotic cars than I had ever seen in one place at the same time before. There were Ferraris (two of them), Porshes, Mercedes sports cars, Jaguars (12 cylinder), etc, etc. The lowest price ones were luxury American cars, Cadillacs and Lincolns. Yep. It was the reserved parking for air-traffic controllers.
August 3, 1981 The President. This morning at 7 a.m. the union representing those who man America's air traffic control facilities called a strike. This was the culmination of 7 months of negotiations between the Federal Aviation Administration and the union. At one point in these negotiations agreement was reached and signed by both sides, granting a $40 million increase in salaries and benefits. This is twice what other government employees can expect. It was granted in recognition of the difficulties inherent in the work these people perform. Now, however, the union demands are 17 times what had been agreed to -- $681 million. This would impose a tax burden on their fellow citizens which is unacceptable. I would like to thank the supervisors and controllers who are on the job today, helping to get the nation's air system operating safely. In the New York area, for example, four supervisors were scheduled to report for work, and 17 additionally volunteered. At National Airport a traffic controller told a newsperson he had resigned from the union and reported to work because, ``How can I ask my kids to obey the law if I don't?'' This is a great tribute to America. Let me make one thing plain. I respect the right of workers in the private sector to strike. Indeed, as president of my own union, I led the first strike ever called by that union. I guess I'm maybe the first one to ever hold this office who is a lifetime member of an AFL - CIO union. But we cannot compare labor-management relations in the private sector with government. Government cannot close down the assembly line. It has to provide without interruption the protective services which are government's reason for being. It was in recongition of this that the Congress passed a law forbidding strikes by government employees against the public safety. Let me read the solemn oath taken by each of these employees, a sworn affidavit, when they accepted their jobs: ``I am not participating in any strike against the Government of the United States or any agency thereof, and I will not so participate while an employee of the Government of the United States or any agency thereof.'' It is for this reason that I must tell those who fail to report for duty this morning they are in violation of the law, and if they do not report for work within 48 hours, they have forfeited their jobs and will be terminated.
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