Stop Paying Federal Air Traffic Controllers To Do Union Work
Diana Furchtgott-Roth: Stop paying federal air traffic controllers to do union work
Unions are supposed to be for the people against the corporation, not for the people against the people.April 23, 2013
Washington Examiner - With air traffic controllers furloughed and travelers delayed at airports, it's time to ask why Uncle Sam is paying 17 air traffic controllers to work full time as representatives for government unions rather than guiding airplanes.
Uncle Sam calls hours that federal workers spend working for their unions and not working for taxpayers "official time." Sixteen of the 17 air traffic controllers on official time make six-figure salaries.
In a report issued in February, just before Presidents Day weekend, the Office of Personnel Management announced that the federal government paid more than $156 million in 2011 for career civil service employees to work on official time, up from $139 million in 2010 and $129 million in 2009.
Government employees, including air traffic controllers, spent more than 3.4 million hours in 2011 on official time, up from 3.1 million in 2010 and 3 million in 2009.
According to OPM's report, "official time, broadly defined, is paid time off from assigned Government duties to represent a union or its bargaining unit employees."
The Department of Transportation spent $17.7 million in 2011 on 264,562 hours of official time, including salaries and benefits for both full-time and part-time employees. Some department employees spent part of their day working for the government union, and others worked for their union full time.
OPM reports numbers of hours on official time. The only way to ascertain the number of full-time employees is to submit a Freedom of Information Act request to each individual agency. Americans for Limited Government, a conservative nonprofit organization, requested the data for each agency.
Kathy Roy, FOIA officer at DOT, reported that 35 employees did no work at all for the department in 2012, including 17 air traffic controllers. Go here for the list. They were paid average salaries of $138,000, for a total cost to taxpayers of $4.8 million annually.
Many more DOT employees spent some of their day at departmental duties, with the rest as official time, courtesy of the taxpayer.
At the upper end of the salary range, three New York air traffic controllers who represent the National Air Traffic Controllers Association were paid $179,700 annually for official time, plus subsidized health insurance, retirement fund contributions, vacation and sick leave.
At the lower end, a program analyst in Atlantic City representing the National Federation of Federal Employees was paid $80,748, plus benefits.
At the Environmental Protection Agency, which spent $2.6 million on part-time and full-time official time in 2011, 17 employees were paid an average of $96,000 each not to work at all for the taxpayer. The list can be found here.
Rep. Phil Gingrey, R-Ga., introduced a bill to eliminate official time in January entitled the Federal Employee Accountability Act of 2013, with 22 co-sponsors. Gingrey introduced similar legislation in the 111th and 112th Congresses.
The bill would eliminate the practice of federal employees working for unions when they would otherwise be working for the taxpayer. Given the sequester, Congress would be wise to pass the bill.
Federal union representatives cannot negotiate salaries or fringe benefits because federal employee compensation is set by Congress, not union representatives. Federal workers are not allowed to strike.
At the Transportation Department, 92 percent of official time was spent on "general labor-management relations."
Official time has increased under President Obama because he issued an executive order to expand government labor-management forums. These are meetings for managers, employees and unions to discuss labor relations and productivity.
Perhaps these productivity discussions should include bringing back to work the 17 air traffic controllers who are away from their posts, on official time, as flights are delayed across America.
Washington Examiner Columnist Diana Furchtgott-Roth (dfr@manhattan-institute.org), former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.
Senate passes bill to end air traffic control furloughs
April 26, 2013
Reuters - The Senate moved quickly late on Thursday to end air traffic controller furloughs that were causing widespread airline flight delays related to last month's automatic federal spending cuts.
Without any debate, the Senate unanimously passed legislation giving the Department of Transportation flexibility to use unspent funds to cover the costs of air traffic controllers and other essential employees at the Federal Aviation Administration.
The House of
Representatives, which is expected to approve the measure, could take it
up on Friday, capping a feverish effort by Congress to end the flight delays that were snarling traffic at major U.S. airports and angering travelers.
Some Senate aides said the measure would also give the FAA
flexibility to keep open nearly 150 "contract towers" at smaller
airports that are staffed by non-FAA employees who help control takeoffs
and landings.
Explicit language to keep open those towers was not
included in the measure, however, according to the aides, and it was not
clear how the agency would handle the matter."I'm delighted that the Senate has just passed a bipartisan bill to resolve a serious problem confronting the American traveling public and our economy," said Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine, one of a handful of senators who wrote the legislation.The bill moved with lightning speed in the Senate where legislation often bogs down for weeks or months. It was passed after a day of furious negotiations between lawmakers and the Obama administration.
The bill, if passed by the House, would close another chapter in a series of Washington battles over budget and taxes that have been waged since 2011.
The cause of the air traffic controller furloughs was the controversial "sequestration" that took effect on March 1, requiring across-the-board spending cuts among most federal agencies. With those cuts starting to bite, a public backlash prompted Congress to reconsider, and fully fund high-profile FAA operations.
Lawmakers are eager
to fix the air travel problem before they head out of town for next
week's congressional recess. They are concerned about deepening public
resentment over the delays caused by the furloughs of controllers.
"It does nothing for other essential government operations and employees that also desperately need relief."ANGRY TRAVELERS
Airline passengers have grown increasingly irritated over the past week with delays at major hubs like Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and Atlanta. Some have reported delays of several hours in takeoff times and planes being put in holding patterns in the air. Many pilots blame furloughs for landing delays.
The National Air Traffic Controllers Association said on Thursday that many of the 1,978 controller trainees were now working full shifts by themselves to help cover staffing shortages.
Airline executives had ratcheted up their complaints.
"This is government not working - capital letters, exclamation point - when we're sitting here holding the traveling public hostage in the midst of sequestration," JetBlue Chief Executive Dave Barger said on a conference call on Thursday.The FAA has said it had no alternative to furloughing controllers this week after Congress failed to come up with a budget deal that would have averted the $85 billion in across-the-board federal spending cuts between March 1 and September 30.
At the same time, the FAA has emphasized that passenger safety is not at risk. Airlines for America, the trade organization for U.S. airlines, also said on Thursday the furloughs had not created a safety issue.
While Republicans joined the effort for a quick fix, many were skeptical about whether the White House and FAA were taking advantage of flexibility they already had.
Republicans have accused the Obama administration of maximizing the disruptions to try to shift budget blame on Republicans, an allegation the administration has denied. Republicans have created a Twitter hashtag, #Obamaflightdelays, for people to complain about the delays.
House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, a California Republican, and House Transportation Committee Chairman Bill Shuster, a Pennsylvania Republican, sent a letter on Thursday to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood asking for internal documents discussing budget flexibilities. The Department of Transportation said it was reviewing the request.
But a congressional aide involved in the original automatic spending cut legislation that was enacted in August 2011 told Reuters the administration could not under current law shift money from outside accounts to fund the air traffic controller account.
SEQUESTRATION FALLOUT
Without the legislation, the FAA said it would have to furlough 47,000 employees for up to 11 days through September 30 in order to save $637 million that is required by the sequestration.
Of those 47,000 workers, almost 15,000 are full-time air traffic controllers or trainees.
The FAA issued an update that said more than 863 delays in the system on Wednesday were attributable to staffing reductions resulting from the furloughs.An additional 2,132 delays were attributed to weather and other factors, the FAA said. The agency said it would work with airlines to minimize delays.
Airlines, many of which are reporting earnings this week, have pushed the government to quickly ease the flight delays caused by the furloughs.
Jeff Smisek, chairman and chief executive of United Continental Holdings Inc, said his company's network operations center was working around the clock to minimize the impact of fewer controllers.
"We are disappointed that the FAA chose this path, that maximizes customer disruptions and damage to airlines instead of choosing a less disruptive method to comply with the budget obligations," Smisek said on a conference call.The proposal being weighed would not spare other agencies and federal programs from the across-the-board reductions.
Continuing the Effort to Curb Excessive FAA Salary Costs (Excerpt)
September 19, 2007The settlement followed extensive negotiations between the FAA and the National Association of Air Traffic Controllers (NATCA), and was implemented under the provisions of the special bargaining rights and responsibilities established by the Clinton Administration and Congress in 1996. In July 2007, the Federal Labor Relations Authority dismissed NATCA's claim that the FAA failed to bargain in good faith. Congress should reject any effort to use reauthorizing legislation to cancel a contract whose settlement fully adhered to existing law. If Congress passes legislation that overturns the 2006 settlement, President Bush should exercise his veto authority.
Background
When the previous contract between the FAA and the air traffic controllers expired in September 2005, discussions over its replacement began in earnest. With average controller compensation then totaling $166,000 per year, the FAA's plan was to slow the growth in controller compensation costs, bringing them more closely in line with overall private and government pay patterns.
After eight months of fruitless negotiations with the controllers' union, the FAA declared that negotiations were at an impasse and, as the law requires, sent its final wage and benefit offer to Congress for review. Under current law, unless Congress disapproves the offer within 60 days, the FAA's final and best offer will be the compensation package governing controller salaries for the next five years. June 5 was the deadline, and the effort to disapprove the contract died in the Senate.
Under the FAA's final offer, total controller compensation would rise to $187,000 over five years, in contrast to the more than $200,000 the controllers wanted when negotiations began.
The Current Law
At the behest of the Clinton Administration in 1996, Congress enacted legislation that gave the government's air traffic controllers the right to bargain with the federal government over pay, benefits, and work rules-a privilege unavailable to the vast majority of other federal workers, then or now.[1] With this new bargaining power, the air traffic controllers in 1998 extracted a sweetheart deal of extraordinary generosity from a compliant White House.
According to the FAA, base pay for the 14,500 controllers soared 75 percent over the next seven years, rising from $64,877 in 1998 to $113,615 in 2005-when the previous contract expired. Including premium pay for location upgrades and other salary add-ons, average controller cash compensation reached $128,000 in 2005. When benefits are included, total compensation averaged $166,000 in 2005. For a select group of 1,300 controllers, seniority, premium pay, and overtime boosted their total pay and benefit package above $200,000 that year. The union is now seeking to reopen negotiations in the hope of achieving a more generous contract.
FAA Salaries
| Low/High/Average | ||
| Air Traffic Controller | $127,334 |
$46k
|
| $180k | ||
| Air Traffic Systems Specialist | $93,049 |
$70k
|
| $123k | ||
| Management and Program Analyst | $75,192 |
$44k
|
| $104k | ||
| Program Analyst | $49,898 |
$36k
|
| $62k | ||
| Electronics Engineer | $88,000 |
$73k
|
| $111k | ||
| Air Traffic Controller Trainee | $62,650 |
$40k
|
| $125k | ||
| Air Traffic Control Specialist | $95,574 |
$69k
|
| $135k | ||
| Airway Transportation Systems Specialist | $62,500 |
$57k
|
| $72k | ||
| Aviation Safety Inspector | $117,000 |
$82k
|
| $139k | ||
| Computer Specialist | $80,213 |
$56k
|
| $94k | ||
| Electronics Tech | $79,733 |
$40k
|
| $100k | ||
| Aerospace Engineer | $78,333 |
$75k
|
| $80k | ||
| Contract Specialist | $62,291 |
$55k
|
| $70k | ||
| Software Engineer | $62,506 |
$50k
|
| $75k | ||
| Attorney | $128,778 |
$118k
|
| $140k | ||
| Pilot | $126,292 |
$59k
|
| $193k | ||
| Civil Engineer | $62,683 |
$58k
|
| $68k | ||
| Air Traffic Controller Supervisor | $163,932 |
$132k
|
| $196k | ||
| AIT Traffic Controller/Automation Specialist | $121,443 |
$67k
|
| $176k | ||
- Federal Employees' Database of Salaries
- Military Pay and Bonuses
- Collective Bargaining by Public Sector Unions
The collective bargaining laws have given enormous political power to the public sector unions. No matter what the real intent of these laws, by any objective standard they are not in the public interest. They represent an expression of the selfish self-interest of public sector union organizers and, indirectly, the interest of the politicians who enact them in order to curry favor with the union's political operatives. The existence of public sector collective bargaining makes public employees "super citizens" and relegates the rest of the public to second class status. Rising public discontent has focused on the public employee, while public employees increasingly take a hostile attitude toward the public. Why is no one pointing out that unions are supposed to be for the people against the corporation, not for the people against the people?
