PATCO Nightmare Fading : Air Controllers Appear Ready to Unionize Again
In some circles, Karl Grundmann was considered a scab.
Like several thousand others, he had been hired to replace one of the more than 11,000 members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization fired by President Reagan for violating federal law and going on strike. Within a few months, PATCO, a victim of disastrous miscalculations, was dead.
That was six years ago.
Today, with the nightmare of PATCO’s self-destruction fading, some important lessons apparently learned and public concern over aviation safety serving as a powerful catalyst, controllers are trying to form a new union.
Times and goals have changed since the PATCO fiasco, and most observers--controllers, union officials and even some top Federal Aviation Administration officials--are predicting that the effort will succeed; that, after ballots are counted this Thursday, a majority of controllers will have approved certification of the new National Air Traffic Controllers Assn. as their bargaining agent.
This time, Grundmann, a controller at the Terminal Radar Approach Control facility at Los Angeles International Airport, is solidly behind the union. In fact, many consider the lanky, 34-year-old Manhattan Beach resident a prime candidate for the presidency of the new union.
Grundmann and others say it is time for a controllers’ union because the FAA hasn’t kept pace with the growth of aviation and because, in Grundmann’s words, “they had a chance after the strike to clean up their act, and they didn’t do it.”
The proponents of the new union say the FAA has failed to replace the fired PATCO members fast enough to keep up with the steadily increasing volume of air traffic. They say the FAA has failed to act quickly enough to replace increasingly outdated radio and radar equipment that frequently breaks down, leaving controllers deaf, dumb or blind.
They say that FAA management has failed to adapt to a younger generation of controllers who demand participation in the decision-making process. They say that despite efforts by FAA Administrator Donald D. Engen to bridge the communications gap between agency brass and controllers, management remains “militaristic”--arrogant, aloof and unresponsive.
Grundmann and his associates say the new union would help the controllers, the agency and the flying public by pressing for improvements in the nation’s air traffic control system while seeking better working conditions.
They say the union can accomplish these objectives while promising never to strike--and meaning it.
Path to Goals
They say their goals will be achieved, instead, by calm, reasonable negotiations with the FAA, by skilled lobbying before Congress and through constructive, cooperative relationships with other lobbying and bargaining groups.
One top FAA official says privately that even without the strike threat, the new union would have effective weapons it could train on reluctant FAA negotiators.
“If they wanted to, they could make life rather unpleasant for us,” the FAA official said. “They could file endless grievances that could tie us up with paper work. They could do little things, like refusing to show the Boy Scouts around the place. They could stage subtle slowdowns that, while illegal, would be hard to prove.”
John F. Thornton, the former controller and PATCO representative who’s serving as the National Air Traffic Controllers Assn.’s interim president until a new union chief can be elected from the ranks, said those things just aren’t NATCA’s style.
“We want a non-adversarial relationship with the FAA,” Thornton said. “Not a lot of rhetoric. Not a lot of confrontation.
“If we went out and started condemning them, got that old antagonism going again, we really couldn’t expect them to say, ‘OK, we’ll deal with you in a upright manner,’ ” he said.
Officially, the FAA has adopted a position of strict neutrality in this week’s election, with Engen, the agency’s chief, urging controllers in a memo distributed systemwide to “vote as you please, but please vote.”
However, the memo took pains to point out that under federal law, “certain matters simply may not be negotiated” between a union and the FAA, including pay rates, holidays, hours of work, sick leave and retirement benefits--all of which must be determined by Congress.
And when asked last week how he felt about the election, Engen said: “I’m disappointed that people felt they needed to do this. . . . Personally, I would prefer to deal with each individual employee.”
If there’s one thing on which almost everyone agrees, it is that much of any antipathy toward the new union stems from previous experiences with PATCO, the organization formed in 1968 to represent air traffic controllers.
By 1971, PATCO had acquired the sponsorship of the larger and more powerful Marine Engineers Beneficial Assn., an AFL-CIO affiliate that gave critical financial support to the burgeoning controllers union.
Grundmann, who observed PATCO as a Navy enlisted man during the mid-1970s, serving alongside civilian controllers at the Lemoore Naval Air Station near Fresno, said he liked what the union was achieving at the time--”things like better retirement, time-and-a-half for overtime.”
But PATCO was flexing its muscles in a way that was starting to bother some of its members--among them Dave Allec, who worked then, and still works, at the Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Control Center in Palmdale.
In June, 1978, for example, PATCO asked that domestic controllers be taken along on free, overseas cockpit “familiarization flights.” The airlines said no, and the union staged a work slowdown to press its demand.
“I objected,” Allec said. “I pointed out that under the agreement we had signed with them, the airlines were within their rights. We weren’t talking about our rights. We were talking about people who wanted a freebie to Tahiti.”
A month later, a judge in New York ruled that the controllers had violated a 1970 injunction barring them from work slowdowns of any kind. But the ruling did little to stem the increasing tide of PATCO militancy.
In March, 1981, PATCO set up “informational” picket lines across the nation to press its demands that controllers--who it said were earning an average annual salary of about $32,000--get a four-day work week, better retirement benefits and an average raise of about $10,000 a year. Estimates of that package put its cost as high as $770 million a year.
Despite federal laws stipulating that dealing with such matters is the responsibility of Congress, the FAA negotiated with PATCO. After talks broke off in April, the FAA warned controllers that a strike would be illegal. Robert E. Poli, the union’s president, countered that “the only illegal strike is a strike that fails.”
On Aug. 3, despite President Reagan’s repeated warnings that they would be fired if they walked off the job, the controllers went on strike.
The walkout created confusion and delays at many airports, but the airlines continued to fly, cutting back schedules about 25%.
The FAA, losing about 11,000 of its 16,000 controllers to the strike, filled the gaps by putting supervisory personnel at radar screens, calling in military controllers on standby and launching a “hurry-up” program to recruit and train new personnel.
One of those recruited was Grundmann.
Asked if it bothered him that some strikers considered him a strike-breaker, Grundmann said that was “something you had to learn to live with. . . .
“But old friends wouldn’t talk to me anymore,” he said. “That was tough.”
For Allec, a PATCO member who chose to stay on the job, not striking was largely a matter of principle.
“I knew the rules going in,” he said. “The rules say you don’t strike. I gave my word. I kept my word.”
A week after the strike, the President began firing the strikers. A month later, with the union trying desperately but unsuccessfully to find a way out, it was apparent that the President had won the test of wills.
In the weeks that followed, analysts said PATCO’s self-destruction was the inevitable result of multiple errors and miscalculations.
They said these included, first and foremost, overconfidence, based on the strikers’ conviction that they were irreplaceable. Added to that, the analysts said, were a gross underestimation of the President’s resolve, a relatively inflexible bargaining position, a failure to coordinate with other unions, a mistaken belief that the business community would oppose the strike for economic reasons, poor public relations that helped make the strikers appear greedy, and poor timing in that the strike was called in the summer, when the air traffic control system is the least burdened by bad weather.
Ten months after the strike began, PATCO was gone.
But within three years, controllers were looking around for someone else to represent them.
“The FAA people were reverting back to their former selves by that time,” Thornton said. “They were getting very comfortable and very callous in the way they were treating their employees--getting back to their militaristic style of management.”
Thornton, one of the fired PATCO strikers, said he was working as an organizer for the American Federation of Government Employees at the time, “and we started getting calls from controllers, people looking to be organized, asking for direction on how to handle their grievances.”
In January, 1986, Thornton met with Kelly Candaele, a 32-year-old labor organizer who was working at the time for the marine engineers union that had sponsored PATCO--and reportedly lost millions in the strike.
Despite these disastrous experiences, the marine engineers union wanted to try it again, Candaele said, offering the financial backing to launch another air traffic controllers union.
“We picked a name--NATCA--and talked strategy, about how to reach 13,000 controllers with our message,” Candaele said. “The material for a message was there. New people had replaced 11,000 controllers. . . . Antipathy from the strike had dissipated. But the management style hadn’t changed. The (public) focus on traffic congestion and air safety provided our forum. I’ve never seen an organizing effort that received so much attention.”
The two men agreed on a low-key, non-accusatory stance. They agreed to structure the union so the membership as a whole, rather than delegates, would vote for top officers, thus avoiding the sort of militant power bloc they both felt contributed to PATCO’s downfall.
Recruiting Effort
Thornton stayed on the East Coast and Candaele headed west, recruiting regional organizers along the way. One of them was Grundmann, now serving as NATCA’s representative for California, Arizona, Nevada and Hawaii.
“I tried to talk to every controller in the region--all 1,733 of them,” Grundmann said.
Grundmann appealed to the controllers’ sense of powerlessness--their need for a disciplined organization to press their concerns over short staffing, aging equipment and long hours. “New people who are making $18,000 a year working bad hours in a place where it’s expensive to live, they’re interested.
“But sometimes it’s tough. If you go to a garden spot like San Diego--a nice facility in a nice place, where a guy might be making $65,000 with overtime and night differential--the guy might not see the need for a union. Frankly, he probably got his job because of what PATCO did.
“But if you explained why you’re concerned--because staffing levels are low, because traffic is up, because equipment is old, because no one is speaking for us in Washington and there’s no relief in sight, then they’re interested.”
One of those who listened is Dave Whalen, 26, a controller who joined the FAA after the strike and was assigned to the center in Palmdale. Whalen was one of 32 named--and later cleared--in last year’s investigation of charges that controllers at the center had been using drugs.
“That investigation left a sour taste,” Whalen said. “Management didn’t back us at all. They treated us like we were guilty until proven innocent.
“Hell yes, I want a union--someone who will stand up for me.”
There are other issues that controllers at the Palmdale Center mentioned--”traffic tickets” being handed out for minor infractions like shouting to another controller instead of using the phone, a new dress code that outlaws ordinary blue jeans--a garment many controllers have worn for years, almost as a badge of honor.
“There’s all sorts of that,” said Kathy Heet, 26, another Palmdale controller who joined the FAA after the strike. “They can do whatever they want, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
“I can’t fight back, because I could lose my job, and there’s nobody else to work for as a controller. I can’t quit, because I have bills to pay.
“NATCA talked to us about PATCO’s mistakes, and they’ve learned from them,” she said. “I think they’ll keep their heads this time, and they’ll protect our rights.”
Last January, the new union filed a petition with the Federal Labor Relations Authority for authorization to hold a certification vote among controllers. Signatures of 30% of the controllers were needed on the petition; NATCA had closer to 48%.
On May 6, ballots were mailed to the approximately 13,000 controllers eligible to vote. The ballots will be counted Thursday, with 50% plus one of votes cast needed for NATCA certification.
