National Association of Air Traffic Specialists

Aviation Safety is Our Business

Bulletin #6

From

Don McLennan

Why pay people more? Now there is a question in desperate need of an answer. Here is hoping NAATS has a good one. We discussed this issue at length. The response to that question is very important to the Agency in considering what a new compensation system for NAATS will look like. There are, of course, some obvious aspects such as management’s desire to observe, as closely as possible, cost neutral pay increases, but more importantly we are talking about a fundamental philosophical basis of why should NAATS members be paid more than they presently are?

Productivity is probably the cornerstone of most people’s response to that question. Our time on position is phenomenal compared with other bargaining units. Or, look at the operations per specialist factor, it is growing in all of the facilities I am familiar with. This is probably due to a slight growth in the GA activity as well as an ever-decreasing workforce. Also, we can now demonstrate differences where we couldn’t before. Our traffic count now more clearly reflects those aspects of our work that previously have gone unrecognized and not warranted their recording. This is a very important piece in implementing a new pay plan based on productivity. You should not be performing work that is integral to the system but is simply not captured because nobody that it was important. Finally, we acknowledge that workload, volume and the complexity of the operation, taken all together, make it clear that there are different levels of work when reviewing all 61 AFSS operations nation-wide.

Another aspect of utilizing a pay system to work on your behalf is the belief that you may attract quality people to higher level facilities if you are willing to pay them more to work there. This is, to some extent, the "hard-to-staff" facility issue as well as understanding we have facilities that are grossly understaffed but they have a great deal of traffic (just as we have smaller, understaffed, facilities where the people are overworked). How do you interest certain individuals to move to where you have your greatest amount of work? You may choose to offer them more money and promotional opportunities.

There are several other facets of this question that are interesting to us. Will you be able to retain some employees, otherwise willing to retire, if they would realize a meaningful pay increase? As short as staffing presently is this retention factor would be of great help to the FSS. Also, we want to retain the parity we have always enjoyed within the Air Traffic Division between the two bargaining units. We have always been able to move back and forth between the two systems and we do not want to do anything that will jeopardize that movement. Finally, there is that aspect of the law that allowed for new pay but said nobody would make less money as a result of implementing a new pay system to try and make the Agency more business-like and more productive. Amen. .

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Walter W. Pike, President

This page was last updated on 26 June, 2000