Air Traffic Controller Strikes - Research Paper

Introduction

Air traffic controllers is an organisation that is a representative of the Federal Aviation Administration. The first time the organization ever called a strike was in the year 1981 with an attempt to press the government for the increases in the salaries, reduction of working hours and better retirement benefits. It is interesting to note that the then president of the united states gave a command that the striking workers should get back to work failure to which a detrimental action would be taken upon them. It is interesting to note that the air controller strike has never occurred again. Regarding this, the president Reagan's success in successfully breaking the air controller strike showed the elevated weakness in the organisation of labour in the united states.

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Because there was a growing and increasing commercial airline traffic following the world war II which took place between 1939-1945, Congress came up with the federal aviation agency (FAA) in the year 1958, which was later given the name federal aviation administration. The Congress assigned the agency with a lot of responsibilities that were related to air travel in the united states, including putting in charge of controlling the civil and military of united states airspace for safety and efficiency (McCartin, 2011). To fulfil its obligation, the FAA was to establish and operate a comprehensive network of the airport control towers and the nearly twenty control centres for the twenty air routes. The air traffic controllers that were responsible for the manning of the towers and the set-up centres made sure that the planes were guided for the point of taking off to landing with the help of the radar and communication with the pilots that was verbally based.

The air travel steadily started increasing, and growing day by day, therefore the air traffic controllers were increasingly subjected to the great level of stress and workloads with reduced motivating and morale to work because of the massive directing of the many airliners that were carrying a lot of people in the sky that was so crowded. This was so much for the workers in the airlines. It was such a stressful job since for the very morning as you enter the workplace to when you leave you've been busy all through and in effect this would affect their health apart from just affecting their general output in work. It is undoubted that if anyone would have been asked what the problem they would say in unison that there is too much work and the job is stressful. According to Campagna (1994), stressful high levels at work lowers the morale and the productivity of the overall output at the place of work. Study research done shows that workers that were working in very high stressful environs were likely to quit and leave the job than those who were working at in less stressful environments (Nordlund, 1998). Additionally, the probability that those who were working in the working places that were accompanied by high-level stress were likely to do something disastrous than those who were working in less stressful environments.

It is so surprising that airline Deregulation act was passed in 1978. Congress had to lift the wide federal controls over the airlines which included new carrier approval, ticket pricing and introducing boundaries on air routes. This in effect led to surging of the new airlines and the air routes which further; led to taxing the stretched air system. This later led to increase in pressures since there was increased scheduling for the tight airlines placing a lot of pressures on the controllers themselves (National Research Council, 1997). The FAA, however, saw the need to increase the number of controllers and indeed employed more than sixteen thousand controllers towards the end of the year 1970. Because of the same reasons that the controller were championing for before, they protested for the first time demanding higher salaries and protest for the stressful working conditions and demanding higher salaries in the year 1981.

For this reason, nearly 11000 air traffic controllers went on strike. The efforts of their union PATCO to organise for a stoppage bore no fruit. Because they are public employees, they were not at any point allowed to strike and therefore any action by the professional air traffic controller were regarded as illegal. The strike posed a threat to bring an economic turmoil on both the nation and the international trade. The president of the country by then-His excellency Reagan gave a three-day return to work notice failure to which they would be fired all of them. In what seemed like a joke to so many air controllers were a serious matter for the one who had issued a directive. They only came to realise that the statement was true and serious when those who failed to report to work were fired following the ultimatum that had been passed, this led to PATCO dissolving.

It is interesting how after the wakeup call offering someplace, the FAA had no option but to quickly enforce new restrictions that would reduce or regulate the air traffic flow. In responding to the intended changes, it reduced the number of flights coming in to the station by one-third of the total flights that previously used to touch the ground. It was surprising that after the firing the, government did not bother going for the people it had fired instead all that period was a time for desperate moments for the air traffic controller. Nearly a decade, the FAA was hiring the employees from already retired experienced controllers especially in the areas that needed sensitive personnel shortages. In general, these trends continued affecting the operations of the airline because there were shortages of fully skilled and air traffic controllers that were experienced (Shostak & Skocik, 1986). Similarly, it was challenging to maintain the level of performance employers since those who had not been fired had been moved to management levels and there was no one to replace the workforce. Because of this, the following summer of 1984 had it rough, that was the time when there was significant disruption in airline scheduling because of the issues that were surrounding the control centre.

The system of understaffing, inspired policies that would most for the time prove ineffective when it comes to caution during the bad weathers. This however continued to be very expensive to the airlines since it demanded them more attention and more caution unlike before. Many airlines alleged that there were cases of delayed flight that were largely associated by the controller facilities tightwire understaffed facilities and that were now obsolete. The obsolete and understaffed equipment was costing the industry a lot of fortune. There were frequent traffic bottlenecks at strategic and major well-known airports like in New York, and Chicago that had previously been recorded as busiest airports leading to disruptions across the whole country.

A lot of issues of concern were in waiting; they were all intending to become part and parcel of the changing wave. As the new airlines worked out to break the monotony and to break to larger markets especially after the airline deregulation, they came to find out that there very tough restrictions that were associated with the reconstruction of the workforce that was responsible for controlling the air traffic (Northrup & Thornton, 1988). There are some who were arguing that it would be cheaper to give the controllers the raise they were asking fir to bring everything to normality by the year 1998, that it would prevent the unnecessary disruption of the air travel for a long time. Nevertheless, some other people believed that this was an attempt for Reagan to uphold on the stand that public servants should not go on strike as the air traffic continued to boom. To make matter interesting, a decade after, president Bill Clinton invited all the previously fired workers to apply for their jobs.

In the reign of Bill Clinton, a lot of dreams were seemingly becoming true after they were almost being shattered by the previous government. With the leadership of the new president, the FAA was intentional in modernising the traffic control system if the air traffic (Nordlund, 1998). Because this was a dream that was supposed to become a reality, the agency developed the plan for the national airspace plan that had a lot to do with modernising of the whole system and the agency was also determined that situations and the stresses the employers were passing through do not recur. It is evident that the consequences of the 1981 mass firing might have a substantially extended into the labour movement of the united states.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the actions by the president Reagan of the united states sent a message all over the country and to all industry that it is not possible to fire all the workers and hire another new group of individuals. It might seem at first, but the reality is that it is impossible especially for the companies or industry that is so big with many employees. Similarly, it also sent a message out there that it is unethical and uncalled for to fire striking workers and to hire another new group of workers especially if the workers' striking reasons are genuine concerns. There are observations that because of the firing of the controllers acted as a watershed for the act in the united state's relations in the labour sector. There is a way after the firing process the number of workers striking dramatically reduced per year unlike before the event. The peak era for the massive strikes was at the beginning of the year 1970s. The fact remains that the firing if the striking workers was a necessary evil in that it helped reduce the number of striking workers per year yet on the other side of the coin it immensely affected the economy of the country and the international trade and the overall international and local travel. Air traffic controllers strike is a strike to remember.

References

Campagna, A. S. (1994). The economy in the Reagan years: The economic consequences of the Reagan administrations (No. 150). Greenwood Publishing Group.

Nordlund, W. J. (1998). Silent Skies: The air traffic controllers' strike. Greenwood Publishing Group.

Northrup, H. R., & Thornton, A. D. (1988). The Federal government as an employer: The Federal Labor Relations Authority and the PATCO challenge (No. 32). Unit of Pennsylvania Center for.

Shostak, A. B., & Skocik, D. (1986). The air controllers' controversy: lessons from the PATCO strike. New York: Human Sciences Press.

National Research Council. (1997). Flight to the future: Human factors in air traffic control. National Academies Press.

McCartin, J. A. (2011). Collision course: Ronald Reagan, the air traffic controllers, and the strike that changed America. Oxford University Press.

Nordlund, W. J. (1998). Silent Skies: The air traffic controllers' strike. Greenwood Publishing Group.