Against the Wind - National Air Traffic Controllers Association

a midnight shift. Less than half the normal complement
of controllers sat along the four rows of radarscopes.
So few workers remained that several coffee
funds had dwindled into one. The solitary pot was
located in an outer office of the administrative wing
on the second floor. Though not a coffee drinker, Gilbert
listened in disbelief as an astonished colleague
told him about a sign that had appeared overnight
next to the pot. From now on, the coffee was for
managers only.
The honeymoon was over.
Power Plays
From Anchorage to
Miami, controllers faced the
same rude awakening during
the next few years. Many supervisors,
who wielded little
real authority yet were pressured
from above to restore
the system to normal, flexed
their muscles where they could.
Unilaterally, they adjusted work
schedules and granted or denied
leave on the basis of personal relationships.
Operating procedures
and work rules were changed by
1
Oct.
FAA operations are reduced from eleven regions to nine. Western and
Pacific-Asia regions consolidate into a new Western-Pacific Region, with
headquarters in Los Angeles. Rocky Mountain and Northwest regions
fiat, often with little apparent planning and virtually
no controller input.
At Denver Center, four areas were being expanded
into five. One key change occurred overnight.
Mike Fellows arrived for work the next day and saw a
line drawn with a grease pencil across his scope that
split one sector into two. “We weren’t briefed on the
frequency, what the procedures were, nothing,” Fellows
says. “They just said, ‘plug in.’ ” Such incidents
fueled worries about safety.
Some managers solicited comment and then ignored
it. The facility chief at Quonset TRACON
posted a notice about a proposal to revert to
unwieldy operating procedures put in place
years earlier. The announcement included
“yes” and “no” columns. No checkmarks appeared
in the “yes” column, yet the plan was
implemented anyway.
“It was like somebody flipped a
switch,” Atlanta Center controller Don
Brown remembers. The attitude became:
“ ‘Okay, we don’t need you anymore. We
won.’ And they went back to managing.”
In the absence of a union contract,
the FAA published a 30-page “Handbook
for Air Traffic Employees in Centers
and Towers.” Commonly referred to
as the Green Book, the manual spelled
out scheduling and disciplinary proce-
Chapter 2: Opportunity Lost
consolidate into the Northwest Mountain Region, with headquarters in
Renton, Washington. The states of North and South Dakota are reassigned
from Rocky Mountain to Great Lakes Region.
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The Green Book: FAA managers and controllers
created this 30-page guide, which
was used in the absence of a collective
bargaining agreement after the strike.