Reply With Quote
Just days after members of the Professional Air Traffic Controls Organization (PATCO) went on strike, President Ronald Reagan declared the strike illegal under the Taft-Hartley act. Reagan ordered the 13,000 striking air traffic controllers to return to work within 48 hours. On August 5, 1981 Reagan fired over 11,000 workers who refused to return to work. PATCO, who supported Reagan in the 1980 election, was decertified as a union and the fired workers were banned from holding federal jobs ever again. It took the FAA close to ten years to return staffing to its normal level.
( Useful Idiot St Ronnie as POTUS signalling, encouraging the all-out VRWC/BigCorp War on Unions and Employees, just one of his many ty anti-99% VRWC tactics )
Official Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) data shows the agency will miss its air traffic controller hiring goal for fiscal year 2015. This will be the fifth consecutive fiscal year in which the FAA has not hired enough air traffic controllers to keep up with the pace of workforce attrition. As of August 22, 2015, the FAA had only hired 1,178 of a planned 1,772 air traffic controllers, putting the agency 34 percent behind its goal.Of the 10,859 certified controllers, 30 percent are eligible to retire at any time. There are only 1,844 controllers currently in training to replace them. Training controllers takes two to four years, depending on the facility at which the new hires are placed. Once placed at a facility, an average 25 percent of trainees do not complete the training and certify.
At inadequately staffed facilities, the FAA requires controllers to work six-day weeks through the use of overtime. Some of the facilities that serve the busiest and most complex airspaces are understaffed. These include Terminal Radar Approach Control facilities (TRACONs) in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston and New York. At these five facilities, the number of fully certified controllers is below the level deemed adequate by FAA standards, and controllers are forced to work six-day weeks.
NASA warned the FAA four years ago that chronic controller fatigue was undermining safety and urged the agency to eliminate six-day work weeks as soon as possible. The FAA had asked NASA to study controller scheduling and its impact on fatigue.
Jim Marinitti, the union’s southern regional vice president, said controllers at the Atlanta approach control facility, one of the nation’s busiest air traffic facilities, have been routinely working mandatory six-day weeks since 2006.
The continual six-day work weeks “definitely raise the safety risk,” said John Goglia, a former National Transportation Safety Board member and aviation safety expert.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/1...g?detail=email
