Ronald Reagan’s response to the 1981 air traffic controllers strike is universally regarded as a massive blow to organized labor, with repercussions that are still being felt by those in America’s workforce today. Despite this act of mass destruction upon worker bees everywhere, Trump’s Labor Secretary, Alex Acosta, announced last fall that the Gipper would be inducted into the DOL’s Hall of Honor. Believe it or not, till now, the Department of Labor was supposed to be on the side of the worker, and the HoH was a place for those whose participation in labor rights efforts actually did some good.
The Labor Hall of Honor posthumously honors those Americans whose distinctive contributions to the field of labor have enhanced the quality of life of millions yesterday, today, and for generations to come.
Previous honorees include farm workers rights legend Cesar Chavez, and LGBTQ labor rights pioneer Frank Kameny. The Hall of Honor pays tribute to heroes like FDR’s Labor Secretary Frances Perkins, who implemented minimum wage and the Social Security Act (which Reagan heroically gutted in 1983), and United Mine Workers icon Mother Jones. Since the Hall was created in 1989, it’s never inducted anyone who actively harmed the nation’s working class. Of course the walking bag of pesticide-drenched wheat who is the American president had to change all that.
In their gushing statements about Reagan, Trump’s Labor Circus fails to mention the air traffic controller strike at all, instead choosing to focus on Ronnie’s pre-White House tenure as president of the Screen Actors Guild, and tossing in some vague language about “unleashing opportunity.”
Check out this oh-so-Orwellian Facebook post! The comments are pretty brilliant.
It’s true, Reagan was the only president to lead a major union, but he’s also the only one to destroy one: the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (aka PATCO). As Huffington Post puts it:
… many activists regard (the PATCO strike of 1981) as the precise moment when America’s unions began their dreadful and inexorable decline, and what labor writer Joseph McCartin called, “one of the most important events in late twentieth century U.S. labor history.”
In an interview with NPR, McCartin dove a little deeper into Reagan’s “distinctive contributions” and what they “unleashed” on American workers.
Prior to PATCO, it was not acceptable for employers to replace workers on strike, even though the law gave employers the right to do so, Georgetown University historian Joseph McCartin says.
The PATCO strike eased those inhibitions. Major strikes plummeted from an average of 300 each year in the decades before to fewer than 30 today.
"Any kind of worker, it seemed, was vulnerable to replacement if they went out on strike, and the psychological impact of that, I think, was huge," McCartin says. "The loss of the strike as a weapon for American workers has some rather profound, long-range consequences."
This is the impact on labor that this administration chooses to honor.
If you’re unfamiliar with the PATCO strike, here’s a quick recap: First, know that being an air traffic controller is a notoriously stressful job: thousands of people riding in million dollar machines are in these people’s care at any given time. That’s a heavy burden that requires a unique blend of mental dexterity and emotional fortitude.
Every day that the controllers come to work, they ask themselves if this will be the shift of their unmaking, and on the Sunday after Thanksgiving they are performing the full gamut of rituals to ward off doom.
In February 1981, PATCO employees demanded more money, shorter work weeks and better retirement benefits from the Federal Aviation Administration.
After six months with no deal, 13,000 ATCs went on strike on August 3. Reagan told them they were breaking federal law—and technically they were, but the Taft-Hartley Act was not one that had routinely been enforced in the past. The Gipper ordered the controllers to get back to work within 48 hours or he’d fire them.
Less than 2,000 ATCs heeded the presidential threat and returned to work. Most didn’t. After all, PATCO was one of just precious few unions that endorsed Reagan over Carter in the 1980 election. Surely Reagan, who led SAG through three strikes when he was an actor, would not turn on unions.
Following the leadership of polarizing PATCO president Robert Poll, 11,345 ATCs tried to call the Gipper’s bluff; he fired them all. Not only that, he banned them from ever working in any federal civil service job for the rest of their lives, effectively taking their future careers away as punishment for trying to improve their current workplace.
It would be 12 years before Bill Clinton overturned that ban; by then, the FAA had replaced the banned workers, and the banned workers had been forced into the private sector, if not out of the workforce entirely. Less than 900 of the striking ATCs were re-hired by the FAA.
After the PATCO strike, the union was decertified and dissolved. All of the brand-new ATCs were eventually unionized under the National Air Traffic Controllers Association in 1987. The ripple effect, though, is what really makes this great honor such a slap in the face:
The PATCO debacle was huge, not only substantively but symbolically. By resolutely taking on a high-profile federal union, and slapping it around in public—slapping it around with everyone watching—Ronald Reagan not only transformed himself into a hero of the anti-labor Right, his actions caused Corporate America to stand on its hind legs and take notice.
The way Corporate America now saw it, maybe the country’s labor unions weren’t the big, bad muscle organizations we’d always thought they were. Maybe they weren’t nearly as formidable as we surmised. Indeed, maybe their bark was far, far worse than their bite.
[…] the PATCO strike marked the beginning of all the bad stuff that has happened to unions over the last 36 years, stuff that is still happening.
As up continues to become down, one Department of Labor Facebook commenter put it best.
Giving Ronald Reagan props for what he did "for the working class" is like giving Jeffrey Dahmer an honorary degree in Culinary Arts for what he did in his Milwaukee apartment ... GTFO.