ToiletDuck

I have to admit I'm a little in the dark on what's going on. Twice this past week I picked up a USA Today with full page advertisements about how air travel is increasing while the amount of controllers are decreasing. Does anyone have their current contract on hand? What is bad about the current contract that they want to have changed? I was under the impression they are well paid, have great retirement, and work for less hours than we do. So what are the main issues they are trying to fix?

miker1369

To answer your question.

Controllers work many more hours than pilots, a normal work week is supposed to be 5 days, 40 hours a week. However as the strike was in early 80’s a whole work force was replace, here we sit 25 years later and they are all retiring at once. So places like ATL, LGA, JFK, IAD, ORD, etc many have been mandated 6 day work weeks and 10 hour days for almost a year now.

Our contract was thrown out 9/3/2006, (Ironically Labor Day) the FAA imposed work rules on us. They imposed work rules that have many issues in it self, but are mostly issues between labor and management, not things that really need to be put on a forum.

What I can tell you is that discipline is running rampant in the agency, lots of 5, 10, 30 day suspensions, and removals. They are trying to scare the workforce.

Along, with that most controllers took a small to medium pay cut,(still nothing like what you all had to go through after 9/11). We no longer get raises, but small cash bonuses if we are good every year. We can live with that even though many of us may not like it.

What we can’t live with is the way they are treating our new hires, they are being paid far below most government employees and made to live in high cost of living areas like New York, Chicago, etc. They imposed an A/B scale. Before 9/3/2007 no one, I mean no one quit the FAA, now it is happening in alarming rates.

It goes a lot further indepth, and if you want to know more just send a message and I will let you know whatever you want about our issues.

Bloodhound

I'm guessing that because the issues are internal there isn't anything that outsiders can do to help. But, is there anything that we as pilots can do to help? You guys work harder than us, have as much, if not more, than we do to monitor/etc. AND, IMHO make far fewer mistakes than us. As far as I'm concerned, I have nothing but respect and appreciation for ATC. Hopefully there is an end to the madness.

Thedude

Ok, but how many hours do you actually sit at the scope or actually control aircraft in a month.

miker1369

Thats a hard question to answer, it differs from facility to facility and depends a lot on the staffing.

I can tell you ATL tower and Tracon (2 seperate facilities) have been on position for around 2 to 2 1/2 hours at a time with 20 minute breaks. So they average around 6 to 7 hours a day on position. The FAA's goal is 6 hours a day on position, its all about productivity. We also do nothing but work on the scopes these days as we don't have FAM flights, (which we can't do since 9/11, in reality we have the clearance but the agency does not want us doing it. They don't want us doing anything except working on the scopes, to them a day away from the scopes is an unproductive day.

I am sure there might be a few places out there that run 4 hours a day in front of the scopes but nowadays that would be far and few between. We are having far more fatigue errors than ever before.

http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/GenPDF.asp?...07IA002&rpt=fa


As far as what you can do to help, research the info, talk to controllers, (I know NATCA is starting to do union meet n greets with many of the pilot unions, we are doing one in ATL on Dec 3, it is to discuss safety though not our contract issues) Once you research it and want to help, write your congressman, we can't strike, so that really is the only avenue we have to getting our labor dispute fixed.

ToiletDuck

Why not I thought you guys were unionized?

Bloodhound

Government employees can't strike. Same thing for USPS employees. They are unionized but can't strike because they're considered federal. On that note, don't refer to DCA tower as "Reagan Tower."

Thedude

I wished ya'll could still do FAM flights. I had several ride on my a/c before and it was usually a question and answer session for both sides. Very informative.

kalyx522

I got offered an interview twice in the past couple months, and turned it down both times because of their crappy new contract. When I was minoring in ATC in college, everyone used to be like, "you will make 6 figures in a few years, blah blah." When I was taking the ATSAT exam, one of the test administrators was a Miami controller who was making $130k. Now you would be lucky if you topped out at 90k-ish (and that is at a level 12 facility, after 10, 20 years? who knows.) If I'm gonna do something I don't love and is very stressful, I would at least like to get paid good money for it... but that is no longer the case with ATC!
there are other specifics to the contract as well, it's not strictly about the reduced basic pay.

vagabond

Well, according to ogogog, the FAA is trying to kill off all remaining controllers with mold and fumes, and rotting food is in the horizon.

http://www.airlinepilotforums.com/sh...220#post269220