Against the Wind - National Air Traffic Controllers Association

54
Against the Wind
1983/84
31
Dec.
sheepishly approached organizers later and asked
them to scratch their name off the list.
“I never saw any management retribution,”
Bill Riley says. “But the
fear was there.” Nevertheless,
30 percent of Atlanta
Center controllers signed
within the first week of
their drive.
The numbers were
mounting elsewhere, too.
In late May 1984, AFGE
filed a petition with the
Federal Labor Relations
Authority for an independent,
facility-only union
at Washington Center.
NATCA’s petition included
signatures from twothirds
of the 320 controllers
in Leesburg.
In June, AFGE filed
petitions from New York
Center and TRACON
and Atlanta Center, the
first salvos in a nationwide
drive. Although the eventual union would be
relatively small, organizing presented a monumental
challenge. The FAA’s 12,000 controllers staffed about
The FAA cancels its General Aviation Reservation system,
which had been in effect for private pilots wishing to fly IFR
since the PATCO strike 2½ years earlier.
450 facilities scattered across all fifty states and several
U.S. territories. Hoping to obtain faster results,
AFGE planned to separately organize each of the
agency’s nine regions before
combining them into
a national unit.
The union would
be designated a council
“
of AFGE rather than a
full affiliate. As such, it
was called the American
Air Traffic Controllers
Council—or AATCC.
Meanwhile, another
government union
known as the National
Federation of Federal
Employees submitted
— ALPA President Henry A. Duffy
petitions from control
towers in Atlantic City,
New Jersey, and Bradley-
Windsor Locks in Connecticut.
Whether the
combined activity influenced
the FAA is unclear,
but the agency suspended
its Structured Staffing program that same month.
The controllers’ efforts also attracted outside attention
and gained significant credibility when the influ-
Controllers must be recognized
by their employers as
the professional group that
they are, and must be provided
with the work rules
needed to exercise their judgments
free of fatigue and
overburdened working
conditions.
31
Jan.
FAA Administrator J. Lynn Helms leaves office after serving
since April 22, 1981.