National Association of Air Traffic Specialists

Aviation Safety is Our Business

Bulletin #21

From

Don McLennan

As long as we are in a waiting period, and there is no way to "update" you on current events, I have been asked to comment on different perspectives of what compensation issues are, facing the Union, and what we might reasonably expect. This effort is intended to assist those individuals who have not already made up their mind about what will, or must need to happen, before they can vote to ratify any pay proposal.

I have heard from many in the field that unless the Administrator's office is willing to treat us as the Air Traffic Controllers we rightful are there is no way in good conscience they will help ratify any "tokenism" extended to them by that office. There is a great deal of emotion surrounding these peoples feelings. I do not know how anyone could really tell them they are being unreasonable. However, what happened with our sister bargaining unit is, at best, an aberration. I will never believe the Administrator's office really, fully understood what they were signing on that fateful day. Actually, if I did I would be one of those persons who would never vote to ratify anything that gave us less than what NATCA received.

Having said that, it is somewhat difficult to say where NAATS would fall out in a NATCA pay plan. Listening to the members whenever visiting my facilities, it seems to me that reasonable people have some pretty vigorous arguments over whether we would be in NATCA levels 6, 7 and 8 or 7, 8 and 9, or something even different. For the simple uncertainty of what it means to "get what NATCA got" I choose not to follow that somewhat intangible line of thinking. I do admire and support those person's sentiment though that would never allow us to be looked down upon by this Administration and treated as second class citizens simply because they have no idea what we do for the Agency and how we fit into the big picture.

Recalling that fateful vote two or three years ago now (has it really been that long?) there were some people that wanted the Union to stay the same. Others wanted a multiple level classification system. But the greatest number of voters said just "get the best deal". Unfortunately, this last category is fraught with pitfalls. It is, however, what we need to be prepared to be discussing, in open forums within our facilities, to insure we know what that is, what it might look like, just in case it goes by. I will pick this theme up in the next bulletin. What is it that we expect from compensation within the FAA, what kind of compensation issues should we be focusing on, is classification alive and well, and are there other issues not widely discussed that should be in order to be ready for a vote, if it comes to that? These are but a few of the questions I would like to get you to thinking about, to better develop your pay discussions and to make us as ready as possible to make the best decisions we can.

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Walter W. Pike, President

This page was last updated on 4 October, 2000