Against the Wind - National Air Traffic Controllers Association

thority concerning day-to-day conditions of employment.”
Reuben also agreed with AATCC’s inclusion of
automation specialists and air traffic assistants in the
union since employees in both jobs worked closely
with controllers. Traffic assistants even reported
to the same supervisors and personnel office.
The FAA had sixty days to appeal, until
which time the election for a union in
New England remained on hold. Nevertheless,
the ruling thrilled AATCC’s organizers.
They were also encouraged that the
FLRA’s regional director understood the
FAA’s inconsistent management policies.
All controllers knew that the FAA was not
the cohesive, nationwide entity it purported
to be. Substantial differences in work rules,
terminology, and even some operating procedures
existed among the regions, giving rise to the term
“the Nine Kingdoms.”
Shortly after the ruling, Eastern Region gathered
enough signatures to petition the FLRA for a
second regional unit. By the spring of 1985, AATCC
had submitted sixty-four petitions—more than double
the number from the previous October—from
facilities in twenty states and Puerto Rico, thanks
to dogged efforts by Thornton, two organizers he’d
hired, and numerous controllers. Discontent was
so pervasive at the San Juan CERAP that Barte and
Gropper signed up most of the controllers during a
30
Nov.
The United States Air Traffic Control Organization disbands due to a lack
of money. USATCO was created in April 1982 and included about 800
members at its peak in 1983. Existing without a contract or an employer,
three-day trip to Puerto Rico.
AFGE’s Eastern states organizer was Beth Thomas.
A former operating room nurse turned controller,
Thomas had firsthand experience
with the issues and was steeped in
union culture. She had grown
up in Altoona, Pennsylvania,
where her grandfather
sloshed through knee-deep,
icy water in the state’s coal
mines. His descriptions
of the hazardous working
conditions—miners carried
a canary with them through
the dark, dank tunnels to
warn of toxic gases—left a lasting
impression about the important
protections that unions can provide.
Thomas’s mother worked for the city and belonged
to a union, as did several uncles who held railroad
jobs.
Her husband, Chuck, was a fired controller
in Tampa. Beth Thomas had applied to the agency
in the 1970s and was waiting to be hired when the
strike hit. The FAA offered her a job soon after, but
she declined. However, she accepted a second offer
in December 1981 and was assigned to small control
towers in Hagerstown, Maryland, and Binghamton,
New York. Unable to transfer back to Tampa, where
Chapter 3: A Long and Winding Road
USATCO focused on reinstating the fired controllers. Membership continually
dwindled, however, in the face of a May 1984 federal court ruling
against reinstatement and President Reagan’s re-election in the fall.
59
Beth Thomas: The controller turned labor
organizer understood the pressures of
her former profession. Even so, Thomas
fought an uphill battle persuading controllers
to support a new union. / NATCA archives