Would you strike?

Given the option, would you go on strike right now?

  • Yes

    Votes: 75 52.4%

  • No

    Votes: 69 48.3%
  • Total voters
    143
I hate to piggy back but I bet MOST of your reps and a114 are at cfs...I mean everyone has the opportunity to go on excused absence to get that fuel bar in business. BUT how many of you have your new schedule templates?
 
Phillytroll69 said:
Fine since I respect you and your opinion and work on the site I'll be real. I absolutely would NOT. I don't think that the agency has been bad to us, I think the union has. What was the last big union win?

Here's what i remember-
1.6% raises are not in line with step raises and are LOST when you move up a band or move to a different facility. IE a 10 year cpc who finally got to 12 z makes the same as the newest checkout
Why isn't it base+(years of service*1.6) makes no sense to me

2015BC(before covid) Chuck Schumer does some privatization talk and natca plasters emails about here's how privatization is a good thing some buzz feed cum dumpster

Some guy runs from the great lakes area? And talks about bullying and blackballing and then gets put in a side room at the convention lmao.

During covid- lots of unions are fighting back about vaccine mandated and natca is silent AND natca does NOT provide guidance on exemptions. And didn't get hazard pay and didn't get back pay for any trainees or attempt to get any money from the frontline heroes fund. BUT notices to airmen is now notices to air missions so that's a win?

Also in covid-trainees are forced to telework against law and teleworking policy and we FAILED to get a permanent teleworking mou in place. Probably cuz the high bmi article 114 were at Disney.

Who knows...people on article 114 duties for 15 out of a 20 year "controller" career. The union running all the agencies side projects from research to safety to briefings and the popular kids get to work from home and get good time on level 12 pay.

The agency and we can add in faama got parental leave, teleworking, modernizing etc.

20% of the union said they are sick of the union not sick of the agency- if your shit sucks the union failed.

Supervisors are getting better raises than us so don't blame the agency
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For what it is worth I agree with you on every NATCA issue, I am with you on holding NATCA accountable for not fighting for us. That is a reason I supported JD/Redmond. Each election with an anti status quo candidate (NDJH does not count) continues to garner more attention and more votes each election. The Zilonis issue still rubs me the wrong way to this day, especially given how hard I campaigned for him. I truly hope this bodes well for the future of NATCA.

My comment was more in tune (perhaps my interpretation of your comment) with people telling us that we should not think about such things because it is illegal. The 1984 vibe I took from that comment might have been out of context.

That said I also truly believe the agency has a degree of fault here as well. Right and wrong are sadly neutral grey up here in D.C.
 
GulfCharlie said:
For what it is worth I agree with you on every NATCA issue, I am with you on holding NATCA accountable for not fighting for us. That is a reason I supported JD/Redmond. Each election with an anti status quo candidate (NDJH does not count) continues to garner more attention and more votes each election. The Zilonis issue still rubs me the wrong way to this day, especially given how hard I campaigned for him. I truly hope this bodes well for the future of NATCA.

My comment was more in tune (perhaps my interpretation of your comment) with people telling us that we should not think about such things because it is illegal. The 1984 vibe I took from that comment might have been out of context.

That said I also truly believe the agency has a degree of fault here as well. Right and wrong are sadly neutral grey up here in D.C.
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Nah I was being slightly sarcastic...but an atc strike today would be almost unfathomable.

Let's set aside the millions of passengers.

Fedex, ups, prime air...how many more commerce operations today vs the 80s?

How many more military operations?

It would be a huge hit.

That being said I gotta say the agency has now addressed fatigue after years of union complaints....but no negotiating?

The agency stated if there are staffing issues due to new fatigue mous they will restrict flows....will it happen?

Only time will tell...but one side seems to at least try to fix problems.


That being all there in terms of striking there is no Solidarity-this isn't a band of brothers fighting for fair pay and treatment. This is a club. Look the same people find out about cfs early and get the leave request in EVERY year. You think those article 114s are gonna risk not going into their air traffic control telecommute zoomgov meeting? Nah 20% off us feel this way and the other 80 are content. Look at election results
 
If you've been in long enough then you know what it's like when the agency tries to unilaterally do things. Article 114 makes a lot of things smoother than they would have been. Whether it's fusion or wake consolidation etc.

You jettison that, and your QoL at work gets worse in unanticipated ways. There's what? Like 50 114ers in the whole NAS? Not enough for people to get their panties in a bunch like they have been. Not for the benefit the workforce gets out of it on the larger level.

There's a lot of cutting of our noses to spite our faces here. As for striking? They will privatize us instantly
 
It's seems to me as an old fart that has been out of the game for a long time that the primary complaint that I hear on this site is facility manning. That would be a hard issue to address in strike negotiations since it would take such a long time to address. In reality, pay is not going to be a popular issue because you already make more than probably 80% of the public. I can tell you from experience that public sympathy to your issues is vital. In 81, the public saw controllers as highly paid, white collar whiners. They didn't care about the real issues. Having said all of that, if you do not even consider the possibility of striking then you might as well not have a "union". It may not matter, the next president may replace your management with his acolytes and abolish NATCA anyway.
 
accskp said:
It's seems to me as an old fart that has been out of the game for a long time that the primary complaint that I hear on this site is facility manning. That would be a hard issue to address in strike negotiations since it would take such a long time to address. In reality, pay is not going to be a popular issue because you already make more than probably 80% of the public. I can tell you from experience that public sympathy to your issues is vital. In 81, the public saw controllers as highly paid, white collar whiners. They didn't care about the real issues. Having said all of that, if you do not even consider the possibility of striking then you might as well not have a "union". It may not matter, the next president may replace your management with his acolytes and abolish NATCA anyway.
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Well the messaging from big NATCA concerning pay should be "You get what you pay for."

If the country is not willing to pay more to their controllers who contribute billions to the economy enough to just afford a decent house in a High COLA area then your going to have more incidents, you are going to have slow downs in moving traffic, you are going to have staffing triggers.

These new controllers coming in aren't the best because we don't pay the best. Look at these low level facilities that use to pay well for those areas, not anymore, not for the last 10 years. These high COLA areas are completely unaffordable for new AGs and developmentals. It's a shame the contract was not renegotiated when it was up last time.
 
TangoBearFox said:
Well the messaging from big NATCA concerning pay should be "You get what you pay for."

If the country is not willing to pay more to their controllers who contribute billions to the economy enough to just afford a decent house in a High COLA area then your going to have more incidents, you are going to have slow downs in moving traffic, you are going to have staffing triggers.

These new controllers coming in aren't the best because we don't pay the best. Look at these low level facilities that use to pay well for those areas, not anymore, not for the last 10 years. These high COLA areas are completely unaffordable for new AGs and developmentals. It's a shame the contract was not renegotiated when it was up last time.
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They are purposely inflating the dollar. They don’t care if anyone can “afford a home”. Rent and be happy. That’s the new motto of the world order
 
anonbob said:
All this, plus hammer home comparisons in percantage raises between us and other aviation based professionals in the last few years.

Hammer home that hourly pay for a flight attendant can (or at least soon will) often exceed that of the hardest working controllers in the most complex airspaces.

This is stuff we should already be doing, without a strike. Even if there's nothing we can do at the moment, we need to be putting out this messaging so that when we can push for it, our position is strong (or at least stronger than it is now).
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Yeah really shows what the complete failure of NATCA throughout the Rinaldi to Santa regime. I've watched multiple congressional hearings with both and I can't recall a single time they have mentioned pay even when it's been thrown to them in some softball questions.

Does the irony of supporting other unions contracts when we missed our opportunity to do so ever bother the people in charge?

Screenshot_20240919_102151_Chrome.jpg
 
Soul_Controller said:
If you've been in long enough then you know what it's like when the agency tries to unilaterally do things. Article 114 makes a lot of things smoother than they would have been. Whether it's fusion or wake consolidation etc.

You jettison that, and your QoL at work gets worse in unanticipated ways. There's what? Like 50 114ers in the whole NAS? Not enough for people to get their panties in a bunch like they have been. Not for the benefit the workforce gets out of it on the larger level.

There's a lot of cutting of our noses to spite our faces here. As for striking? They will privatize us instantly
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Only thing I would disagree with there is the privatization trigger if there was an actual strike. We are too involved in real time civil/military operations with interest to the national security of air traffic for the government to let us belong to some private entity. In a way, it would be like them privatizing the capital police to some private security company instead of them belonging to the uniformed officer component of the secret service. Granted we aren’t law enforcement in any capacity, but the sentiment remains the same. The smaller VFR contract towers, sure. But I guarantee you Uncle Sam wants to have positive command and control over the more major facilities especially radar. And if they really wanted to privatize us, explicitly for striking, why didn’t they do it in 81?

*For clarity and legal reasons I am not condoning a workforce strike against the U.S. Government.*
 
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PATCO didnt think Reagan would fire us all. I don't think there was a big call for privatization back in 81 but there has been recently. You think there wouldn't be an epic smear campaign about us? Look in the news recently and see all the errors ATC has caused be it runway crossings, take off clearances, etc etc.

I can see the news now. Controllers only work 3 to 4 hours of an 8 hour shift. Controllers caught leaving early at hundreds of air traffic control facilities. Controllers get minimal to no punishment due to being federal employees, impossible to fire bad employees. There is literally a controller working right now that got people killed because they were on a personal phone call rather than doing their job. That's outrageous to me.

Depending on the president, if we went on strike we would be privatized immediately. There are so many contract tower, retired, and military controllers that would fill in our ranks in a heartbeat. They fired us all once and they would likely do it again.
 
CoffeeIV said:
PATCO didnt think Reagan would fire us all. I don't think there was a big call for privatization back in 81 but there has been recently. You think there wouldn't be an epic smear campaign about us? Look in the news recently and see all the errors ATC has caused be it runway crossings, take off clearances, etc etc.

I can see the news now. Controllers only work 3 to 4 hours of an 8 hour shift. Controllers caught leaving early at hundreds of air traffic control facilities. Controllers get minimal to no punishment due to being federal employees, impossible to fire bad employees. There is literally a controller working right now that got people killed because they were on a personal phone call rather than doing their job. That's outrageous to me.

Depending on the president, if we went on strike we would be privatized immediately. There are so many contract tower, retired, and military controllers that would fill in our ranks in a heartbeat. They fired us all once and they would likely do it again.
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The mass firing back in ‘81 was during a staffing situation that’s a stark comparison to what we’re facing now. I really don’t think they can afford to do what they did then. Not saying people wouldn’t be fired, but it wouldn’t be NEARLY to the scale it was back then. Plus, retired controllers are aged out and military controllers are needed at DoD facilities for the slice of the NAS that they own which in any case can be argued to be much more important than any civil ops so neither of those are happening.

It’s been said time and time again that the mistakes happening on the rise as of late are due to controller fatigue (as addressed by the agency by the change) but is inherently due to a bad staffing shortage which circles this excerpt back to my first point. All in all as GulfCharlie stated, a strike would bring the air carriers, military and all other stakeholders to their knees and the agency wouldn’t be able to recover from that if they fired people on a massive scale similar to past times in ATC history. It’s admittedly anyone’s guess at the end of the day as to what would happen, but I do believe they would fire SOME and still be forced to negotiate. In a broader interest, even one of us getting fired in my eyes still makes this a bad move.
 
SquawkHijack said:
retired controllers are aged out and military controllers are needed at DoD facilities for the slice of the NAS that they own which in any case can be argued to be much more important than any civil ops so neither of those are happening.
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They used military controllers before. Also aged out means nothing when the rules change. You can't ground stop the entire country indefinitely. Airlines made over $200 billion last year. That's not including FedEx/UPS, all the hotels, all the industries making money off tourist like taxis/uber, theme parks, etc etc.

It's better to slow the NAS down and fill in anyone available than to allow a strike that could last an unknown period. Plus if we do it this time, what stops us from doing it again and again like they do in France? The government isn't going to allow that.

I just don't think it's a wise move. You can be arrested and it has happened. The government will win.
 
PooseMaGoose said:
I wonder what would happen if every single controller came down with a sniffle for a day or two.
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Everyone would lose their security clearance and be terminated - at the very least. The organizers would probably face jail time and hefty fines. Maybe, conveniently, call you a domestic terrorist.
 

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