Forty-five years ago today, the Reagan administration fired 11,345 PATCO members who ignored a 48-hour ultimatum to return to work.
The strikers asked for $10,000 across-the-board raise and a 32-hour workweek. Controllers were earning roughly $20,500 to $49,200 at the time. Median family income was $22,390. The union's package came to somewhere around $700–770 million against an FAA offer of $40 million.
Strikes by federal employees were illegal, and every controller had signed an affidavit promising not to. Even FDR called a strike against the government "unthinkable and intolerable" in a 1937 letter.
Strip away the iconography and what remains is a textbook rent extraction: a small group sitting on a chokepoint in national infrastructure, with no competitive market to discipline it, demanding a transfer from taxpayers who mostly could not afford a plane ticket. The timing was not subtle either: deregulation had passed in 1978, fares were finally falling, and PATCO made its move exactly as the surplus started reaching consumers.
Reasonable objection: the FAA was a bad employer, the stress complaints were real, and rebuilding the workforce took about a decade rather than the promised two years. The lifetime rehiring ban was gratuitous, and Clinton lifted it in 1993.
Posted by mostanonymousnick
8 Comments
> and rebuilding the workforce took about a decade rather than the promised two years
This isn’t even remotely true. Air traffic controller staffing levels still haven’t recovered 45 years later.
> Rebuilding the workforce took a decade
mfw labor ultimately has the leverage to start and stop production and strike bans are a confession that labor has this leverage masquerading as a crackdown on it (you can’t abolish leverage because leverage is an emergent property inherent to physical reality)
This is how my dad got his career in ATC started, was installing cable and telecom at the time
I don’t think people understand how crazy the 10,000 across the board raise was. I have mixed feelings about the strike busting, we’re still struggling to staff today, but it’s a good reminder unions need to be actually strategic in their demands
I think given how the 2019 shutdown was essentially ended by ATO sick-outs, idk if the lack of strike power even really ended from these firings.
it seems as if the strikers were right about shitty pay and long stressful hours, considering their numbers still haven’t recovered. Though an essential public job/union should never go on strike for the sake of the country (as they’re, you know, essential).
This is AI generated slop
We carry the flame