Thu, Dec 23, 2004
Reaping Seeds Sown In 1981, 1993
By PATCO President Ron Taylor
The FAA has just released its 97-page report entitled "A Plan
For The Future, The FAA Ten Year Strategy For The Air Traffic
Controller Workforce." These guys are still operating in a time
warp and this brainstorm idea has all the characteristics of what
they said they were going to do, back during the PATCO strike of
1981 and the promise to rebuild the ATC system even better than
ever, so let’s try this again.
This latest scramble to hire desperately needed Air Traffic
Controllers only shows that this agency has been out of control for
23-years, and part of their light bulb filament came on when they
realized that the workforce hired after the 1981 PATCO strike and
the subsequent firing of its members by President Ronald Reagan,
was about to retire.
Now, the FAA should have and could
have avoided this whole crisis management circus back in 1993 when
President Clinton lifted the ban against hiring PATCO Controllers.
Then, more than 5,000 highly qualified PATCO controllers re-applied
for their jobs. Of that number, only about 846 were actually hired
back. The operative word for the FAA on hiring back any more PATCO
Controllers has been " litigate" rather than "alleviate" the
staffing problems.
PATCO has been fighting the FAA for years, alleging age
discrimination against its members. There are currently cases all
over the country. Currently, PATCO has filed for an injunction
filed against the FAA in Tennessee federal court. The union is now
awaiting a hearing to address its allegations of FAA
discrimination.
The agency states in its report, that it plans to hire 12,500
controllers over the next ten years. The breakdown shows that in FY
05 the FAA plans to hire only 435 controllers and only 1,249 in
2006. In the plan, the FAA declarees it will "leverage the existing
inventory of potential candidates in FY 05 and FY 06 to meet the
demand for new hires." If the FAA is really sincere in its latest
"leverage" scheme, then its leaders should address the 3,653 PATCO
controllers who have been on their list of eligible re-hires for
the past 11 years -- and yet, remain sitting by the phone, waiting
for the recall. Based upon the FAA's own statistics in this report,
it is quite obvious that this is not their intent. That leaves
PATCO's only remedy in a court of law.
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