Against the Wind - National Air Traffic Controllers Association

148
Against the Wind
Joseph Bellino: The O’Hare TRACON
controller led a campaign that resulted
in 20 percent more pay for controllers at
seven hard-to-staff facilities. / Stan Barough
1993
29
Sep.
mott, who was a member of the senator’s staff, and Ed
Bears from agency headquarters. Bellino was invited
to present the controllers’ proposal, which essentially
amounted to a request for more money.
For Bellino, that posed one critical question:
How much? On the flight from Chicago
to Washington, figures swirled in his
head. The controllers wanted 5 percent,
so should he ask for 9 percent, hoping to
split the difference? What about 7 percent
or 8 percent? His uncertainty kept him
awake that night at the hotel.
At the meeting the next day, McDermott
laid it out to Bears. “What we’re looking for
here, Ed, is something for O’Hare.”
“If you controllers wanted more money, you
should never have taken jobs in the government sector,”
Bears snapped irritably. Then he turned to Bellino
and demanded to know the bottom line.
“We want twenty percent more,” Bellino
blurted. Realizing he’d responded impulsively—Bellino
swears he doesn’t know where the figure came
from—he quickly adopted a poker face.
Bears looked shocked. “You know about it,
don’t you?”
Bellino fought back a look of puzzlement. He had
no idea what Bears meant. Instead, he bluffed. “Yeah,
of course we know about it, Ed. What do you think
we’re doing here? Just because you’re at headquarters
The FAA agrees to pay $19.5 million in back premium pay to controllers
who took annual and sick leave on Sundays. The grievance, filed Novem-
doesn’t mean the rest of the country is stupid.”
McDermott interjected and asked what they
were talking about. Bears proceeded to describe a relatively
new Pay Demonstration Project
that compensated scientists with a
20 percent bonus for working at
the China Lake Naval Weapons
Center in the Mojave
Desert, a hard-to-staff facility
like O’Hare.
It took Congress until
1989 to enact the same differential
for controllers. By then, Michael
McNally in New York, Bernie Reed
on the West Coast, and others had gotten involved to
help expand the list of facilities to the Magnificent
Seven. Bay TRACON controllers particularly appreciated
the extra money due to the area’s exorbitant cost
of living, and they joined NATCA in droves.
“People saw that the union was doing something
for them,” Reed says. When he later stepped
down as facility rep, the membership presented him
with what remains a prized possession—a gavel with
the inscription: “To Bernie Reed. You accomplished
100 plus 20 percent.”
Even though controllers at the Magnificent
Seven were happy, pay demo rankled many others
and created an awkward dilemma for the union.
NATCA’s leadership warily embraced the hefty pre-
ber 20, 1992, covered nearly a seven-year period beginning November 20,
1986. Subsequently, Congress passes a law outlawing the extra pay.