The much needed modernisation of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) faces staunch union and congressional opposition.
This year, says FAA Administrator Marion Blakey, is unique because the agency’s basic authorising statue must be rewritten by congress while the FAA’s air traffic controller labour contract must also be renewed. At the same time, the FAA’s Air Traffic Organisation, its central business management unit headed by Russ Chew (see Feedback page 90) has openly conceded that many facilities – from towers to navigation aids – are crumbling as revenues slow to a trickle because low airfares keep value-based taxes at all-time lows.
But Congress has moved to block one of the agency’s first cost-savings efforts, a plan to close or contract out many flight service stations used by private pilots, while the National Air Traffic Controllers Association union (NATCA) has begun raising the emotional temperature as contract talks bog down.
To bypass political opposition to FAA cost-cutting and consolidating, some industry figures have recommended an external “veto-proof” panel like those used to close military bases. Continental Airlines vice-president for Washington affairs Rebecca Cox, who sat on two of the Base Closing and Realignment Commissions, says the process “gives congress plenty of cover” from political pressure. An FAA Advisory Commission says the agency payroll must be trimmed and it could save millions by consolidating, for example, 150 traffic control facilities, nine regional offices and 71 good-weather-only towers. However, many of these are centres of employment at a time when blue-collar and unionised jobs are at peril nationally.
Congressional opposition is in part fuelled by the traffic controllers, who are often potent local political powers. Because consolidation to the union is a code word for privatisation, the controller union and other FAA unions have fought it tooth and nail.
And the controller union has gone public with charges that the FAA has abandoned co-operation in favour of public confrontation. In an unusually public stance, the FAA has accused the union of “abuse and mismanagement” of co-operative scheduling and overtime at a New York control centre, revealed rising rates of controller errors at Boston and other airports, and detailed controller retaliation against a whistleblower at Dallas/Ft Worth, where controllers allegedly “covered up” operational errors. The FAA rarely goes as public as it has with its own errors and problems.
NATCA president John Carr calls the error reports “a warning shot across the bow, a precursor to negotiations” and says “I’m surprised she stooped so low, so soon.” Carr adds it was “all hype” when Blakey slammed the NATCA contract. She claims that the annual cost of controller pay has risen to $2.4 billion from $1.4 billion since 1998, when predecessor Jane Garvey signed the contract.
Annual pay and benefits for the 14,500 controllers now average more than $165,000, Blakey says, adding: “The taxpayer can’t afford to take another hit like that again.” The contract expires in mid-September and, although the controllers by law cannot strike as they memorably did in 1981, they can court public sympathy.
NATCA has tried to win public sympathy with heavy advertising. In an unusually aggressive tactic, Carr raised the safety issue, saying “we do not believe that the agency can keep its responsibility to ensure the safety and integrity of the aviation system if the leadership of the agency refuses to speak with those who know the system best. And quite frankly just making a show of consultation is not enough.”
DAVID FIELD WASHINGTON
Source: Airline Business
