Interesting - my mid-level FAA management nephew who in the past has considered himself a conservative Republican lapsed into an irrational hissy-fit at a family party last week when I mentioned something about the election - “Republicans don’t care about the workers” (Ask the Reagan Democrats I said) “We can’t go back there - they can’t cut interest rates any more for Reaganomics to get the money to make trickle down work” (We cut the corporate tax rate, bring home profits from overseas, cut regulations like Obamacare, and produce our own energy like oil said I) “Now you’re defending the big oil companies - we go to war to get their oil for them and they screw everybody” and he drifted away - strange, but then I remembered some time back when he had said that ‘rat administrations were good for the FAA because they got to hire lots more workers, but Republicans meant leaner times - they must be feeling the heat and expecting defeat.......
Nothing new here... has been going on since before radar was used by controllers (Find a copy of ‘Fundamentals of Air Traffic Control’ by Nolan and read the History of ATC for some good background of ATC and labor). In more recent times, the consideration of various FAA jobs as “inherently governmental” has been the focus, as any function that is not, can be competitively procured. Controllers in particular do not want their jobs privatized.