Air Traffic Controllers Quarrel with FAA
WASHINGTON, Dec. 1 – Contract negotiation disputes between the Federal Aviation Administration and the air traffic controllers union have damaged morale and may lead to fewer persons entering the high-stress field, according to a union representative in New Hampshire.
“Morale is pretty low right now,” said Mike Blake, the northeastern representative for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. “There are concerns over staffing and retirement. The FAA is not pulling people in fast enough to handle that.”
Blake works at the Boston Air Traffic Control Center in Nashua, the 16 th busiest of its kind in the country. He represents all of the approximately 420 controllers working in New Hampshire.
The union has been in contract negotiations with the FAA since July 13. The old contract expired Sept. 30, and on Monday FAA administrator Marion Blakey called for a federal mediator to assist in the negotiations, saying the union’s demands for an increase in the basic salaries were unacceptable.
“The whole thing was a publicity stunt,” said Doug Church, spokesman for the controllers union. “They want to take the contract to Congress, declare an impasse and bypass the entire collective bargaining process.”
Because of restrictions regulating contract negotiations with federal employees like air traffic controllers, the matter would be brought before Congress should either side declare an impasse. If Congress does not rule in favor of one side after 60 days, the union would be forced under federal statutes to accept the FAA’s last best offer.
“The administrator [Blakey] was very clear,” said Laura Brown, spokeswoman for the FAA. “She wants a voluntary agreement. But we’re still very far apart on issues like pay and compensation.”
Air traffic controllers, according to Brown, earn an average of $166,000 annually, including benefits, a figure the union disputes.
“It is a way of cooking the books so they can say we’re overpaid,” Church said. “Our best guess according to our pay tables is that we make about 100 to 150 [thousand].”
The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that New Hampshire controllers are the highest paid in the nation, with the average controller in the state earning $118,000 annually. But that does not include benefits.
Labor costs account for 80 percent of the FAA’s $8.2 billion budget, according to agency statistics. The agency proposed freezing controllers’ salaries, with merit-based pay raises replacing cost-of-living increases. The union. According to the FAA, has asked for a 5.6 percent pay increase each year over the next five years, although the union has publicly disputed such figures, saying it asked for the increases only over the next two years
The union’s Blake said he thinks the contentious negotiations have contributed to a bogged-down hiring process, leading to a shortage of controllers.
“I think you need to attract the best people possible, and we’re pushing right now,” he said. “The mandatory retirement age is 56, and we’ve got a lot pf people in the twilight of their careers. It is really a young person’s game.”
The United States has the busiest airspace in the world, and there are now more flights in the air than at any previous period in the history of aviation, but with fewer controllers guiding more airplanes, Blake said.
A Government Accountability Office report in June 2002, states that “the FAA has not done enough to plan for the impending staffing crisis and needs to do so as soon as possible.”
“You can’t help but think the delay in hiring is because of the new low pay scale,” Blake said. “If they were to bring in people today, they’d be covered by the old pay scale. But once the new pay scale is negotiated, they [the FAA] could bring in new people for lower wages.”
Blake said he also fears that should the negotiations get ugly, many controllers will find their jobs outsourced to private contractors.
Hiring is going along as usual, according to Brown, who said the FAA plans to make 1,249 new hires in 2006 to replace 654 retirees.
“The hiring process is going completely as planned,” she said. “We plan to bring in 12,500 over a 10-year period.”
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