I agree with what others said that any real bump in staffing won’t come for at least 5 years, and more realistically 10. Even if NATCA gets all it wants with major increases in funding for hiring, maybe even a second academy, who long would it take to implement that? The FAA still sucks at hiring procedures, HR takes long to get all but experienced controllers though pre-hiring, etc….
Maybe NATCA didn’t address pay until just recently because they secretly are counting on the shit staffing to resolve the pay issue? Bad staffing has meant record OT the last two years for me and countless others. With that I actually did keep pace with inflation, but only because I worked 120+ hours of OT each year.
Maybe they think we are too stupid to look at it that way? Or just know the long term expanded staffing plan is a pipe dream and didn’t expect people to rebel about pay.
As I mentioned once before, it’s been interesting to see the message from high NATCA evolve over ten year to be “this is the best job in the world”, to basically “this is not a bad job and the best job you are qualified for and able to do so just be thankful for it”.