Posted on 09/28/2014 8:32:11 AM PDT by Kaslin
An obituary in the Washington Post for Robert Poli provides a chance to look back at a decisive moment in Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Poli was the head of the militant Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO), which launched an illegal strike in 1981. The Post describes the significance of the action:
The strike by PATCO, Reagan’s subsequent breaking of the union and the hiring of replacement workers were among the most significant job actions of their time, said Joseph A. McCartin, a professor at Georgetown University and a specialist on labor and social history. They “helped to define labor relations for the rest of the century and even into the 21st century,” he said, turning public sentiment away from striking as a legitimate labor tactic and further emboldening employers in the private sector to permanently replace striking workers.
Reagan’s hard line with the PATCO strikers six months into his presidency helped establish an image of him at home and overseas as a strong leader who would not be pushed around.
Here is the sequence of events:
The PATCO work stoppage began Aug. 3, 1981, when at least 12,000 of the nation’s 17,000 air traffic controllers defied federal law and walked off their jobs, seeking higher pay, shorter hours, better equipment and improved working conditions in a long-simmering labor dispute.
There were widespread flight cancellations and delays, and 22 of the nation’s busiest airports were directed to reduce their scheduled flights by 50 percent.
That morning in the White House Rose Garden, Reagan declared, “I must tell those who failed to report for duty this morning they are in violation of the law, and if they don’t report for work within 48 hours, they have forfeited their jobs and will be terminated.”
Two days after the walkout began, Transportation Secretary Drew L. Lewis announced that at least 12,000 striking air traffic controllers had been terminated and would not be rehired “as long as the Reagan administration is in office.”
The Reagan administration stuck to its guns. The strikers were replaced by nonstriking controllers, air traffic supervisors, and military controllers until new controllers were trained.
The episode was a very gutsy move by Reagan, with beneficial consequences. But as I note here, the 1981 strike and response did not come out of nowhere—PATCO had been causing problems for years. In 1969, for example, about 500 members of PATCO called in “sick” in a protest, which caused major air service interruptions. And in 1970, about 3,000 members of PATCO took part in another “sickout,” or illegal strike, that caused chaos for the nation’s air traffic. Those sorts of union troubles continued during the 1970s, which set the stage for the Reagan showdown.
Today, the government’s air controllers have a different union organization, NATCA. Rather than illegal striking, these folks do what a growing number of groups in society are doing to advance their agendas: they lobby.
Also as a pilot, for the next 6 years or so, the controllers and pilots worked together to to keep the system going. Now we are back to the Federal Anti-Aviation Administration.
It is a human condition to become bureaucratic, when it happens in the private sector the organization dies or reorganizes.
Many of the fired controllers came back and got rehired.
As a controller who worked through the strike, I can assure all that your views on the matter are wrong on many levels.
From Wikipedia:
"Executive Order 10988 is a United States presidential executive order issued by President John F. Kennedy on January 17, 1962 that recognized the right of federal employees to collective bargaining. This executive order was a breakthrough for public sector workers, who were not protected under the 1935 Wagner Act.* * *
Executive Order 10988 was effectively replaced by President Richard Nixon's Executive Order 11491 in 1969.
According to the Washington Post:
At the federal level, about 63 percent of federal workers are unionized, estimates Robert Tobias, a former president of the National Treasury Employees Union and now director of Key Executive Leadership Programs at American University. Although BLS does not confirm Tobias’s estimate, it’s clear unions have a strong presence in the federal government.
Do tell.
Facts are stubborn things. The stories recounted are unvarnished.
A little aside: about a year later, I was talking to one of your counterparts who worked through the strike. He agreed with my assessment, and told me that on that day, he noted in the log that most of the shift didnt show up for work, and that it was a minor problem.
Was there extra work, mistakes made? Yeah. I recall following a Frontier jet who was told to go around because the local contoller made an error clearing the departing traffic to go in front of him.
So tell us: where did Reagan make his mistake? should he have let PATCO dictate policy and hold the country hostage?
Never forget that when you hear some “Republican” candidate railing about “Big Government”.
On day 1 of his presidency, George W Bush could have ended the nightmare. along with revoking EO 11246, which is perhaps the most heinous EO in American history.
But did he?
And if not, what’s Republican about him?
I didn't do a lot of stupid crap when I was a controller. I only had a few heated exchanges in my career. We got our jollies when we were able to place two C-5s down on parallel runways at the same time. I was in Germany during the strike, so I did not get deployed, but I knew some people who did. Those PATCO guys had a no strike clause, so they screwed up. It opened up a ton of jobs for USAF controllers to go FAA, and it took the Air Force many years to recover.
It was stupid. They were trying to gum things up, slow it down, cause minor annoyances.
Being on the receiving end of it was frustrating, because there was no way out of it, short of “don’t fly”...and since that’s how I made my living, had to do it.
The funny thing is that they could have made it work. Everyone was on their side for the first couple of days...but then when they didn’t go back, opinion turned against them in the pilot world.
As for the people who took the jobs....well....the USAF controllers were OK, but the newbies hired off the streets were a challenge over the next few years. Definitely missed some of the older guys...
I was coming back home from Europe on leave. My flight took off four hours late and was the last one to get across. After a few more minor adventures I finally got home much later than evening.
Years later I ran into one of those former ATCs working the counter in a pizza joint.
than evening = that evening.
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.
:-)
I had just left Laughlin for Germany (as a Tsgt) so I am not sure what affect it had on the controllers there. I liked it, even though I was busy as heck. It was not a 24/7 operation. When student flying was down, we all went home. If we came in at 5, and student flying was done at 6, we went home. When students were flying, Laughlin had the biggest block of airspace for an airport, in the entire world, out to 90 miles and up to FL 230. Some of the few pilot friends that I had, told me they had fun flying inverted around airliners passing above their training areas, at or above FL 240. It was a wild career, but I was happy to finally retire.
Yep, at Travis, we had coordinator positions between tower and Approach. We did the same thing, got a hole to launch 141s and C-5s. The holes were not so much for separation purposes, but for wake turbulence There was no danger of them hitting each other, because we had parllel runways. It was wake turbulence. People called us from other bases, like Dover and other places, to get help on wake turbulence procedures also.
I was already in Germany when the strike happened. There was a guy coming from Griffis, who was on leave and was told not to answer any phones, so he could escape to Germany too. He helped train me as a 2 striper at MT Home.
Yup...I wuz there.
The things you were related were as viewed from one cockpit....that AIN'T the big picture. From the cockpit, a pilot does not know anything about the air traffic picture other than what he can see, or hear on the single frequency he is monitoring. An air traffic facility handles far more than one pilot can be aware of.
Where you were on 8/3/81 had a large impact on how the strike affected operations. You related one facility that was little affected, and that is undoubtedly true. I worked at Chicago Center, the busiest air traffic facility in the world. Eight of us were non-Patco and never left, 14 came back before the deadline, which left us with 22 FPL controllers. Counting sups, certified staff, and 3 recent transfers who returned, we had 58 people certified to handle traffic......we fired four hundred sixty five.... more than an inconvenience
NEVER HAPPENED THAT WAY
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