National Association of Air Traffic Specialists

Aviation Safety is Our Business

Bulletin #22

From

Don McLennan

In the last bulletin I mentioned it would be good to develop some ideas and boundaries to have meaningful compensation discussions. It would seem that for NAATS to "get the best deal" we should attempt to define what that looks like to the many different people we represent. 

I know for many of our members it is vocalized as being the NATCA agreement, whatever that means. I am not being factious, just wanting to challenge all of you to answer the question, "What exactly does that mean, and is it possible it may mean different things to different people?" If your answer is "maybe, or "I'm not sure", that is all right. I simply want you t recognize that for those who say, "I want what NATCA got," it is not as simple for the BOD to represent that point of view as you might think. Speaking as an individual and not representing any NAATS points of view, I believe it means a multiple classification level system. But as I said in the last bulletin, there is no common agreement among our members on facility placement into specific ATC pay levels. This begs the question that unless the BOD could get the "right" levels assigned to NAATS those people would still not agree with a "NATCA" solution. All of this makes saying "I want the NATCA agreement," less than something concrete and deserves the challenge of, "What exactly do you mean?" when you hear that. For example, does that mean they favor giving up the AWS as part of the necessary cost savings to pay for compensation increases? Are they considering the work rules that have been tentatively agree to (TAU)? Do they believe they know what level their facility would be reclassified to under the "new traffic count"? There were some interesting changes from the Administrator's handbook, in facility traffic count, based on the test that was conducted by NAATS and the FAA. I would therefore caution those individuals that the possibility of a terrible surprise awaits them if their assumption is based on the "old" data.

For those people that responded, "Just get me the best deal", that is also a response loaded with uncertainties. Does this take into affect the work rules that have been TAU? Does that mean just get as much NAATS compensation beyond that guaranteed within the Core Compensation System? There are other questions that I will try and take up in the next bulletin to give the membership some thoughts to kick around.

Back to Bulletin List.

Walter W. Pike, President

This page was last updated on 14 October, 2000