Against the Wind - National Air Traffic Controllers Association

says. But the employees were happy “doing their best
to keep the child alive.”
While the lack of personnel made every day
a scramble, it created a close-knit atmosphere that
included moments of whimsy. One favorite activity
involved a visit to Wilma Gisala in the Membership
Department. Gisala read palms and had a knack
for accurate predictions, including one premonition
about a union member who won a car and Tsui’s
impending marriage to a controller. A few diehards
called in for daily readings.
Out in the field, regional representatives
and the union’s locals
faced the same daunting task of
starting from scratch. “Watching
the whole system develop
was like watching a tree
come to life,” says Christine
Neumeier, who worked with
Ed Mullin during NATCA’s
organizing days and has been
the administrative assistant
for the Southwest Region office
since 1992.
When Neumeier signed on,
the office consisted of a small, windowless
space in one of Dallas Love Field’s largely
empty terminals. Only later did NATCA expand its
quarters to include a bathroom and badly needed
Sep. Sep.
12
NATCA’s new National Executive Board meets for the first
time since the election in its offices on the eighth floor of MEBA
headquarters in Washington, D.C.
29
storage areas. “We were so covered up with file cabinets,”
Neumeier says, adding that the furniture “was
one step above a garage sale.”
As with headquarters, the telephone served as
a primary communications link in the field. “There
was no e-mail, pagers, cell phones, etcetera,” says
Terri Jeffries, who also joined NATCA in 1992 as administrative
assistant for the Southern Region office.
Simply obtaining a bulletin board to post union
material in FAA facilities was often a fight. Many
controllers set up offices in their homes because
managers refused to give them space at work. The
first Atlanta Center union office consisted of a
tiny desk and wall phone in the men’s locker
room. Files for the New York Center local
resided in the trunk of Michael McNally’s
red Toyota Corolla hatchback. Members
held meetings in their living rooms and
basements until management ceded the
second guard shack at the center, which
was spacious enough for three people.
“They gave me that because it leaked
like a sieve,” McNally recalls. “But it did have
a bathroom, so I was excited.”
For a couple of years before and after certification,
the local at New York TRACON enjoyed
the use of a room at the Public Employees Federation
branch office in Hauppauge on Long Island. The largess
came through Michael Sheedy’s father, a union
Chapter 4: The House that NATCA Built
NATCA presents the union’s first contract proposal to the
FAA. The proposed agreement contains about eighty articles.
109
Richard Gordon: NATCA’s first labor relations
director left the union in 1996 and
formed a consulting firm. / NATCA archives