Comment by runako

3 months ago

Seems like a colossal error to have asked them all to quit.

I wonder -- if half of the air traffic controllers took the offer to leave their jobs, do we have a Plan B? The deadline they have been given to decide is Thursday; I have not seen any communication as to whether ATC (and TSA, etc.) will be operational Friday.

74 comments

runako

Reply
mayneack  3 months ago

It seems they clawed back the offer or never gave it in the first place.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-administration-exempt...

  • johnnyanmac  3 months ago

    So what does that really mean for those he outright fired? They didn't "resign".no one who (stupidly) responded to that email to resign would have taken any effect anyway.

    • lmm  3 months ago

      In a country with the rule of law, employers can't generally take away these kind of things when they've promised them - this got Musk in to trouble when he made a generous severance offer in Europe and had to actually follow through on it.

      In America? Who knows.

    • mayneack  3 months ago

      Were there air traffic controllers fired? I saw reports about some upper management at the faa and related, but haven't seen anything here.

      1 reply →

lenerdenator  3 months ago

> if half of the air traffic controllers took the offer to leave their jobs, do we have a Plan B?

In theory you could do what Reagan did and tell the military to do ATC.

Whether or not this is a good idea is another matter.

  • robert_foss  3 months ago

    Reagan taking away collective bargaining rights for ATCs seems to be what have led to the shortage and the helicopter accident last week.

    • ApolloFortyNine  3 months ago

      The official investigation report is of course going to take a bit, but the ATC audio is public, and the helicopter was warned twice about the plane, and said they had a visual of the plane.

      Besides never missing an opportunity to 'slam' the opposition, I have no idea why this is being construed as an ATC failure.

      5 replies →

    • legitster  3 months ago

      Kinda. Collective bargaining rights are great for employees but they do not automatically lead to better outcomes for customers/citizens/etc.

      A good counter-example of ATC would be police. Police have strong collective bargaining rights, but mostly came at the expense of accountability and citizen oversight. (And also police departments are still chronically understaffed).

      9 replies →

    • WillPostForFood  3 months ago

      It was 44 years ago. We have had 6 presidents since then. Every single ATC controller from 1981 is retired, most for over a decade. You probably should be looking at a more proximate cause.

stevenwoo  3 months ago

The number that I've heard that accepted that offer across the government is in line with normal attrition rates with federal employees - the only people who bit were already planning on quitting. It appears that most or all else was wise to how shady this deal was.

  • CYR1X  3 months ago

    Part all of this BS is sure at twitter if you pull this you might get a decent attrition rate but isn't the federal government known for people never quitting? If they quit, it's quiet quitting coming in every day and doing nothing. Isn't that generally the purpose behind this too? Like...good luck get a real amount of people to quit they are going to hold on for dear life

    • acdha  3 months ago

      > they quit, it's quiet quitting coming in every day and doing nothing

      You think air traffic controllers are “doing nothing”? What VA staff, park rangers, food inspectors, etc.? I realize this stereotype is something a lot of people spend money reinforcing but you should consider why you believe it to be true of a nationwide group doing a huge range of jobs and what evidence that’s based on.

      2 replies →

pfannkuchen  3 months ago

I thought the buyout offer went along with the cancellation of remote work. Like, if you are thinking about quitting because you don’t want to come in, here have an extra incentive to do that and take some time to find another job.

ATC already couldn’t work remotely. The only people who would take a deal like this would be people who were thinking about quitting or retiring anyway. I suspect ATC will not be substantially affected by people taking that deal.

  • csa  3 months ago

    > I thought the buyout offer went along with the cancellation of remote work.

    Your sentiment is a result of their incredibly vague first attempt at messaging.

    The offer was (or ended up being) a full buyout offer. The “offer” is probably genuine, but it’s not a clean offer, as many edge cases are unclear (e.g., can they terminate you if they accept the offer… currently there is nothing stopping them from doing that, how can someone of retirement age accept the offer and then retire, etc.).

    Iirc, ATCs can accept the buy out if they so chose. I’m guessing most won’t, as the ATC deal is good to stick with until you retire.

    Edit: Per the article, the status of the offer is unclear. It wasn’t cleared with the union before the letter was released, and it hasn’t been officially rescinded either (despite comments that it has from DoT).

    • pfannkuchen  3 months ago

      Sorry to be unclear, I didn’t mean that only people transitioning from remote to in person can take the buyout. I meant that that is what the deal seemed to be targeting based on the timing, like a release valve for people who would be angry about switching back to in person.

      7 replies →

  • runako  3 months ago

    The other set of people who might take the deal are people who are concerned that the new administration will consider them "DEI hires"[1] and fire them later in the year. This is not an unreasonable fear given that the administration has already blamed the DC crash on "DEI" and pledged to root out "DEI" everywhere.

    If you expect to be fired ~ in the fall, it is not unreasonable to be interested in the offer to keep getting paid from your federal job while you look for alternate employment.

    1 - I am not going to get into who fits this category. The point is which employees might think they fit into this category.

  • whycome  3 months ago

    Wait, why can't ATC work remotely? Serious question. They're looking at data on a screen and communicating via radio. Would the latency of any radio-digital relay be too high? Sure it's feeling like one step closer to Ender's game. But it could be possible in theory?

    • RandomBacon  3 months ago

      I'm an Air Traffic Controlling working at a "Center" (ARTCC). It's not the latency - it's that we have backups for the backups. I wish my house had the same level of redundancy my workplace does.

      Edit: except for the asbestos. I'm glad my house doesn't have that. (IIRC they were all built in the 1960s.)

taeric  3 months ago

I'd be interested to see the daily staffing levels over the past couple of weeks. If anyone knows where that could be found.

lesuorac  3 months ago

It's a colossal error to accept. The government isn't authorized to do a buy-out by congress so you're just quitting and won't receive the payment.

  • germinalphrase  3 months ago

    It never was a buy out, and everyone should stop referring to it as such.

    • Jtsummers  3 months ago

      Yep. It was a pinky swear to maybe pay for 8 months that might be able to be spent on leave, but none of it was guaranteed.

      The employee's agency determines if they spend it on leave, not OPM. Congress will determine if there's even money after March 14th available to pay for 8 months of anything, let alone 8 months of admin leave.

randerson  3 months ago

ATCs have the upper hand in this negotiation because they're essential and can't be quickly replaced.

If enough ATCs quit that major airports have to be shut down or reduce flights, the airlines (and stock market) will turn against Trump pretty quickly. My guess is the going salary for ATCs is going to increase substantially once they realize they need to lure back those who quit.

I would love to see all ATCs in DC quit, and for others refuse to work there, so that Trump and Musk feel the consequences for their actions directly. Wouldn't it be great if Air Force One was stranded because of this.