After 3.5 years in the
FAA, I was a signed-off, "FPL" (full performance level) air traffic controller. I'd joined the union because I could see how the FAA's HR policies said one thing, but how the supervisory and management workforce did something else.
Again, the really ironic thing is that Seattle Center (ZSE), where I have spent my entire career, was and is one of the BETTER places in the agency. I can't imagine what it's like working at some of the crappy places, where it's more or less open warfare all the time.
For those first few years in the FAA, most people aren't really active in anything other than just trying to study, learn, and avoid being washed out. I was no exception. I was just focussing on my training, and then on my days off I was enjoying some diversions.
As a side note, one of my diversions was to work casually as a repo man. We'd sneak into people's driveways in the middle of the night, hook their car up to the tow truck, and haul it away. Some "diversion", eh? I have to say it was a lot of fun, and since I never actually got shot at, it was relatively low-risk, too.
Once I was signed off, that next year or so was spent getting used to being an FPL instead of a trainee. When you're in training, there's always an instructor plugged in with you on the sectors or positions that you're not certified to work on alone. And while you do get some time to stay current on the ones you've already checked out on, you still work most of your time plugged in with your instructor- meaning you always have a bit of a safety net.
They say that you learn more the first year after you're an FPL than you learned in your three-and-a-half years of training. That was certainly true in my case; within about 6 months I damn near ran a couple of airplanes together at high altitude (33,000 feet) and high speed (500+ mph for each airplane). The amazing thing is that I wound up not even having a "deal", an operational error.
Additionally, in that first year as an FPL, I was busy dating. Well, dating just one gal, and for us it wasn't so much "dating" as it was melding. Paula and I were both part-time ski instructors at Crystal Mountain, a natural fit. We started seeing each other shortly before I was fully certified.
She encouraged me, once I was signed off, to work on union stuff- so I did. At the time, we were in a fight to save what was known as our "operational differential", which is a nice way of saying "our extra money". We were on the federal government's "GS" pay scale at the time, as GS-14s, but we also got an additional 5% bonus pay.
Congress was trying to take that pay away, so I volunteered to work for NATCA on saving it. I visited Washington DC a number of times, lobbying Representatives and Senators to keep that pay. I published a frequent newsletter that had much better writing than this blog. And this work wound up to me being appointed to fill out a term as Vice President of the ZSE NATCA local, and then I won election in that role and served another couple of years.
Over that time period, I saw how a union can really make a difference in an employee's life and in the workforce's general working conditions.
To be fair to our supes and managers, the vast majority of the time they were great and did the right thing by the employees. If/when there was a conflict, they truly worked with the employee and the union to try and get things worked out in a manner that would help both the FAA and the employee.
Back then, the FAA wasn't fighting the union. In fact, it was quite the opposite; the agency was actively working WITH the union, getting controller input on new systems ranging from automated weather sensor equipment to new radar display system computers to traffic metering programs, and everything in between.
We implemented several new systems. None represented a quantum leap forward in capacity, but each system was a fairly significant improvement over the previous system. When the FAA had tried the "great leap forward", it went about as well as it did under Chairman Mao in China. The FAA tried to run a project called Advanced Automation System (AAS) in the late 80s and early 90s. The centerpiece of that system was the Initial Sector Suite System (ISSS).
The agency blew billions on ISSS and AAS. We have very very little to show for it; after the program had slipped to several years behind the proposed timeline, with no end in sight and having bled billions, Congress and the FAA finally stuck a fork in it and killed it.
After that fiasco, with the advent of the Clinton Administration, the FAA started to get more serious and realistic about what it could accomplish. At ZSE, we were the first site to successfully implement the VSCS system, a computerized voice switching system with touchscreen displays and all-digital communications. We were also the first site for the Display System Replacement (DSR), which finally got rid of the old tube-driven, monochromatic displays.
These were the "M1″ consoles that controllers worked on until the late 90s.
The FAA had learned a lesson from the earlier mess, and by getting the union involved we had early employee input into the design and function of the systems- input from the people who were actually going to be USING the stuff, not just managerial types who hadn't controlled traffic in decades.
So in my career in the agency, over the first several years, I got to see both sides of the coin. I saw the utter failure (with a lack of accountibility on the part of the managers) of the big push for new technology, and I saw what happened when the workers (through their union) were involved in the process earlier and more intimately.
NATCA also successfully got FAA personnel reform passed, which allowed us to bargain collectively over wages. The way this law was written would later bite us in the ass, but at the time it was a great deal because we got a nice raise spread out over several years, coming off of the GS pay scale.
(We were already GS-14s, which is fairly high-paid for government work, but then again most folks working for the government can't kill 300 people by accidentally saying "turn left" instead of "turn right".)
I was appointed to a position as the vice-president in the ZSE local, and later ran for election and won. I'd done a lot of work on legislative activities and seen how we were starting to build a coalition of Representatives and Senators- both Republican and Democrat- who respected us for being forthright, telling the truth, and dealing with them in an honest way.
In addition, I saw how having a union made a tremendous difference in the lives of the employees it represented. I saw bad supervisors (fortunately the minority) who would have run rampant without a union to serve as a balance against them.
As ZSE NATCA VP, I once had the distinct displeasure of catching a manager (long since gone from our facility) lying right to my face on a fairly important issue. I called her out on it, because her lies and manipulation of the situation made her look good- but had a very direct impact on the controller she was lying about.
The particular situation isn't really important, but what it amounted to was her lies were doing tremendous damage to the employee's morale and psyche. By having a union, the union rep (me, in this case) was able to stand up for the employee; the employee had no power and was being abused in the situation and was unable to stand up for himself.
I also saw what happens when you do that; even WITH the protection of the union, I was later stuck with the blame in a situation that was not really my fault. The QA manager at the time (long since retired) stuck it to me as best he could, but the union was able to append their comments to the error report and the truth came out.
The biggest thing that would cement my belief in the union came when my girlfriend, Paula, died in a car accident. We had lived together for 5 years, buying a house and starting a business together, and basically done what young couples in their 20s do- plan their lives together and enjoyed life.
When Paula died, I went into a deep depression. I could have easily lost my job, but NATCA was there- had been there all along, actually, to cover my back. And the story of how that shook out is up next in Part V.
This is a multi-part series cross-posted from my blog, A Blue Eyed Buddhist
You can also read the other parts here on DailyKos:
Part I
Part II, which was featured as a diary rescue! Thanks!
Part III
Part IV
or by going to my blog and clicking on the "FAA/NATCA" category.