Turbulence in the Tower

The controllers walk, the President hangs tough, and the planes (mostly) fly

The fateful collision could have been foreseen by any air controller, without even a glance at the ghostly blips on his radarscope. Like a Piper Cub lost in a thunderstorm, the tiny Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization—representing 85% of the 17,500 federal employees who direct the nation’s air traffic—veered wildly off course. It flew into a rage against its employer, launching an illegal federal strike. An angry Ronald Reagan, revving up the full jumbo-jet power of the U.S. Government, deliberately bore down on the defiant union. The result was inevitable: the controllers crashed, the U.S. kept flying.

By week’s end some 5,100 of PATCO’S 13,000 striking controllers, who earn an average of $33,000 a year, had been sent dismissal notices by the Federal Aviation Administration. Federal judges ordered U.S. marshals to haul five local union leaders off to jail for defying court injunctions against the strike. Some leaders were marched away in handcuffs and shackled from waist to feet in chains—standard procedure for a federal arrest—adding a note of high drama to the crackdown.

Some 30 others were ruled in contempt of court and will be sentenced later. At the same time, federal judges levied fines against the union and its leaders that were piling up at the rate of more than $1 millionfor each day the strike continued. The union’s $3.5 million strike fund was frozen. PATCO was, in effect, broke.

Neither the strike nor the resulting mass firings crippled the nation’s vital air transportation network, though in some areas and selected sectors of the economy the impact was palpable. After a confused first day of jammed air terminals, extensive flight cancellations and runway waits of up to two hours before takeoff, the FAA’s long-prepared contingency plans rapidly pushed the movement of aircraft back toward normal. As the strike wore on, the percentage of airline flights operating as scheduled showed overall improvement: Monday, 65%; Tuesday, 67%; Wednesday, 72%; Thursday, 83%.

At first, airport and bus ticket counters were thronged. Amtrak switchboards were jammed. Rental car firms found fewer customers at their airport counters, while at their downtown offices in large cities, fearful air travelers queued up for wheels. International passengers had little choice but to wait out available flights, sometimes camping overnight in terminals. Businessmen turned to corporate and charter aircraft, which was not always an improvement; under the FAA’S contingency plans, such planes had a lower priority than the scheduled carriers. But as the week progressed, even the reduced number of flights held more capacity than the fewer passengers could fill. The airport crowds vanished, counter service notably improved. Said Traveler Bob Barnett of Santa Monica, Calif.: “The L.A. airport was about as mellow as I’ve seen it in 15 years.”

At week’s end the FAA ordered the nation’s 22 largest airports to cut scheduled flights back to 50% for at least a month in order to reduce any delays and ensure safety. The agency also announced plans to triple the number of new air controllers it trains, currently 1,800 a year, and began accepting applications for the jobs once held by the fired PATCO strikers. In New York City alone, 1,763 people signed up in the first five hours. The Government was preparing to fly without PATCO forever. Declared a confident Transportation Secretary Drew Lewis, who piloted that strikebreaking course under close White House supervision: “To all intents and purposes, the strike is over. Our concern is to rebuild the system.”

Some 3,000 supervisors and 2,000 nonstriking or nonunion controllers were manning the towers and radar centers that monitor U.S. air flights. A backup force of some 500 military controllers, out of an available pool of 10,000, rushed to major air centers. They began studying civilian control procedures, and would begin to take up shifts this week if needed. Up to 700 military controllers can be reassigned to civilian posts with only a minimal effect on military operations; if the FAA needed more than 700, selective cutbacks in military flights would be required.

The strikers, as stubborn and high-spirited a bunch as ever hit the bricks, did not, of course, concede defeat. Despite the overwhelming Government pressure, they continued to picket airports from LGA (La Guardia) to LAX (Los Angeles International), rallying behind their bearded, owlish-looking president Robert E. Poli in an unusual show of solidarity. Poli, 44, a former controller himself, called the Administration’s actions “the most blatant form of union-busting I have ever seen.” Vowed he: “It will not end the strike.”

The controllers predicted that the air system cannot survive long without them and that the fines and firings, which do not become final until a lengthy civil service appeals process is completed, will be lifted once this becomes apparent. Meanwhile, as Air Controller Eric Sletten said on a picket line at Miami International Airport: “Reagan’s hard line is just hardening our line.”

That seemed to be true. The union’s abrupt walkout and the Administration’s swift retaliation had left neither side any face-saving way to resume negotiations, particularly since the Government considered the bulk of PATCO’s constituency no longer strikers but simply among the unemployed. The FAA even took steps to decertify PATCO as the legal bargaining agent for the controllers. Justifiably confident that public opinion was solidly on his side and still basking in his legislative triumphs on Capitol Hill, the President massed a historic show of force against the first labor union to challenge his Administration directly. Ironically, PATCO had been one of the few unions to support him for election last fall.

Reagan’s tough reaction to the strike was reminiscent of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s wartime order to draft striking coal miners in 1943, then to have the Government seize and operate the mines.

When rail unions struck that same year, Roosevelt put the War Department in charge of the railroads. Harry Truman similarly ordered strike-bound coal mines seized in 1946, railroads in 1950 and steel mills in 1952. Richard Nixon in 1970 sent military troops into post offices where federal employees had illegally left their jobs. Still, taking on the controllers was not quite as difficult as facing down coal, steel, railroad and postal workers—who have far more members and political clout than doesPATCO.*

Actually, Reagan had wanted to move even faster against the air controllers, but was restrained by his aides. The President’s impulse on the day before the strike was to warn that all the strikers would be fired. His advisers suggested that since the walkout had not begun, such a statement would be both provocative and premature. Secretary Lewis, who found the controllers dangerously “whipped up,” cautioned: “It could have given them a point to rally behind—that we were using a pretty big gun to force them to sign.”

Reagan checked his anger and held his fire until after the strike was under way on Monday morning. Summoning reporters and photographers to the White House Rose Garden, he read a gently phrased statement. “I respect the right of workers in the private sector to strike,”he said. “Indeed, as president of my own union, I led the first strike ever called by that union [the Screen Actors Guild, 1959].” But Government, he said, “has to provide without interruption the protective services which are Government’s reason for being.” He noted that Congress (in 1947) passed a law forbidding strikes by Government employees. He read aloud the nonstrike oath that each air controller, and indeed any federal employee, must sign upon hiring, and said of the strikers: “They are in violation of the law, and if they do not report for work within 48 hours, they have forfeited their jobs and will be terminated.”

While forceful, the President was not vindictive. “Dammit,” he said privately to his aides, including Chief of Staff James Baker and Counsellor Ed Meese, “the law is the law, and the law says they can’t strike. By striking they’ve quit their jobs.” Later, Reagan noted publicly that the air controllers were “fine people,” and added: “I do feel badly. I take no joy in this. There is just no other choice.”

Though Reagan seemed to be taking a safe and popular course in facing down the controllers, failure to do so could have been costly. For one thing, other federal unions—most of them quite small, but a few, including the postal workers, strong and increasingly restive—were warily watching the Administration’s attitude toward Government strikers. Said one Reagan aide, drawing a rather far-fetched analogy: “If you cave in to a group like this, that has a stranglehold on public safety, what do you do, for example, when the Army wants to strike? It’s the same thing.” The President also could not permit a strike to shut down the air industry at a time when his entire economic recovery program is newly enacted and is about to take effect.

But if the battle was primarily between the President and the controllers, the general public was a much involved third party. An unsettling question formed in millions of minds: Just how safe are the skies when substitute controllers—and, eventually, military specialists unfamiliar with generally heavier civilian air traffic—are manning the towers and scopes? In addition, how long could the supervisors stand the strain?

Federal aviation experts—including Lewis, a lawyer and licensed pilot, and FAA Administrator Lynn Helms, former chairman of Piper Aircraft Corp. and an experienced test pilot—insisted that the system was as safe as ever. Noting that traffic was down at the nation’s airports, some airline pilots contended that this actually made flying less hazardous than before the strike. At busy airports, like Chicago’s O’Hare International, aircraft were required to stay 20 miles behind another plane approaching a landing, rather than the usual five miles; planes taking off had to wait five minutes instead of the normal one minute or less before rolling down the runway after another had left.

The striking controllers, however, contend that the supervisors are generally older men (in their mid-40s vs. mid-30s for rank-and-file controllers) who may have grown rusty at manning the scopes and who may tire once the initial exhilaration of stepping into an emergency situation wears off. Initially they were working 12-hr, daily shifts vs. the controllers’ usual 40-hr, week. At week’s end, Helms ordered that no control tower employee should work more than 48 hours a week.

As for the military replacements, many of the strikers themselves first learned their trade in the service, typically during the Viet Nam era. Some contend that the shift to civilian duties was difficult for them. Said Poli, somewhat menacingly, about the fill-in system last week: “I hope that nothing happens.” But if it does, he suggested, “the Government is responsible.”

The argument scarcely returns the blood to the knuckles of those millions of airline passengers who are jittery about flying under the best of circumstances. TIME Correspondent Madeleine Nash, who has been following air-controller operations at Chicago’s O’Hare for several years, last week found a marked change in the mood of the pressure-packed tower crews 200 ft. above the runways, as well as in the darkened radar room 20 ft. underground:

“There is a swaggering style, a macho flair to O’Hare’s ace controllers. In near darkness, they hunch over their radarscopes like teen-age boys playing electronic games. Their faces glow in the greenish-yellow light, as each sweep of the radar reveals a constantly changing configuration of planes. They have developed their own special mystique. They chain smoke and drink countless cups of coffee while placating their upset stomachs with chalky Maalox tablets from the big glass candy jars that are standard in every control room.

“During a thunderstorm, the controllers’ voices, while crisp and professional, take on a raw edge. Their instructions to pilots are shot out in staccato bursts with no pauses. As tension mounts, profanity flows like water—though the pilots do not hear it. They understate their shared fears. ‘Delta, is your heart beating as fast as mine?’ a controller will ask with his mike shut off. ‘C’mon, you turkey,’ another will say about a slow-responding aircraft. ‘Who’s got Eastern?’ one controller will shout. ‘Let’s get him the hell out of there.’ “Last week the swaggering kids were gone. In their place were gray-haired men wearing ties. There was a staff of 15 rather than the usual 24—and all but one was a supervisor. The atmosphere was more somber than usual. The pace was slower, with long pauses between spoken words. But even the supervisors could not resist breaking into joke-cracking tower talk. Referring to a pregnant female colleague handling departure control, one temporary quipped: ‘I’ve told her we’re keeping her till her pains are six minutes apart.’ ”

Basically, however, the controller’s job is a lonely, stressful ordeal. He stares at his scope and gives instructions to pilots, who, as ultimate commanders of their own aircraft, can ignore the advice. But responsibility for the lives of all those airborne s.o.b.s (souls on board, in controller lingo) weighs heavily. They see that constant burden as no less than that of the pilots aloft. Though the jobs are not all that comparable, many of the young controllers resent the higher pay (reaching $115,000) and greater prestige of the airline skippers. “You know how much pilots make,” said Striker Matt Blum, 26, as he picketed at O’Hare. “They’re flying an airplane with 150 on board, and they’re using automatic pilot. We’re sitting at a scope working ten airplanes at once, with 150 people on each plane. We have more responsibility, and we spend more time working.” So why did Blum become a controller? “It looked like pinball machines in a penny arcade.” He adds, somewhat contrarily, “And controllers make good money.” Blum’s base pay is $27,000 a year.

Jealous of the pilots, fearful of being worn slowly down by the stresses and responsibilities of their own task—yet proud of their skills and fascinated by the space-age gadgetry they have mastered—the controllers gradually came to the conclusion that they had been taken for granted too long. The Government would have to be taught a lesson.

The air controllers have long been unhappy about what they perceived as the sluggish pace at which the FAA supplied them the modern equipment needed to cope with increasingly crowded skies.

They felt that nearly all their job-related complaints were being ignored by the FAA when they were represented by the National Association of Government Employees, which included a myriad of other federal workers as well. The controllers broke away, forming PATCO in 1968, partly at the urging of F. Lee Bailey, the noted criminal lawyer, who is a pilot himself. PATCO’s first president was John Leyden, a New York controller who in the late ’60s had been honored by the FAA as its “controller of the year.”

Complaining that airline traffic was up sharply while the number of controllers was not, some 450 of them protested in June 1969 by staying home for two days, claiming to be sick. The FAA declared that PATCO had encouraged the sickout and that it would no longer recognize the union. For three weeks in the spring of 1970, some 3,000 controllers claimed illness and stayed off the job. “We had no equipment—it was dangerous, dangerous,” recalls Carl Vaughn, 45, a Pittsburgh controller. “Little or no automation had been introduced, and near misses were a common occurrence.” The FAA reacted by firing some 100 local PATCO leaders and temporarily suspending most of the sickout participants. Still, the FAA seemed to get the controllers’ point; automated radar gear was gradually installed at major centers. To regain certification as a bargaining unit, PATCO in 1971 formally pledged never again to encourage a work stoppage or engage in a strike. At the time, only about 3,000 controllers remained in the union.

As air traffic continued to grow, so did the controllers’ concerns about stress and safety, and so did PATCO. By the mid’70s, the union had nearly 15,000 members—all but 2,000 of the entire staff of qualified FAA controllers. The union grew increasingly militant as rank-and-file members felt that each new contract failed to meet their same old demands for more reliable equipment, less grueling shift schedules and more pay.

A turning point came last year when both Leyden and the union’s longtime vice president, Poli, turned in resignations to PATCO’S executive committee in response to the mounting membership complaints. The board accepted Leyden’s, but not Poli’s. Explained Controller Vaughn:

“In Leyden’s day, there was no better union leader. But in the end he didn’t hang tough. He didn’t want a strike. Poli stood up to it all.” Added another controller:

“Leyden had our hearts, but Poli understands us.”

Elevated to the presidency, Poli took his reputation as a militant seriously. A hearty eater and drinker, the 6-ft. 2-in. Pittsburgh native usually speaks calmly and always clearly. “I am not a ranter or a raver or a stomper,” he says. “I am frank and straightforward.” One critic calls him “a brash bastard,” while one follower considers him “a helluva father figure.” Poli does not apologize for, in effect, pushing his friend Leyden aside. “We could see there might be cause to strike,” he explains coolly. “I knew I would be ready for it, and John might not be.”

Still, a strike seemed far from inevitable when negotiations between PATCO and the FAA began last February. Technically, the FAA is not like a private employer in such talks; anything it agreed to would have to be approved by Congress. Poli opened the bargaining by presenting 96 demands, a list the FAA’s Helms understandably dismissed as excessive. Yet the union was truly serious about three of its concerns:

WAGES. Poll asked for a $10,000 across-the-board annual increase for all controllers. Their pay now ranges from $20,462— the starting salary at some 100 unhurried airports serving small cities—to $49,229. The wages increase with the difficulty of the job (starting pay at one of the busy “birdcages” near New York, Chicago and Los Angeles is $37,000). On top of that, Poli wanted a twice-a-year, cost-of-living increase that would be 1½ times the rate of inflation. The FAA offered a $4,000 wage hike, which would have included a $1,700 increase as part of the 4.8% raise given all federal employees this year.

WORK WEEK. Poli sought to cut the five-day 40-hr. week back to a four-day 32-hr. schedule—a reduction the controllers seem to want more than pay increases. While they apparently would not accept a salary cut to compensate the Government for their reduced hours, most PATCO members see this issue as the key to lowering their on-the-job anxieties and enhancing safety. The Government at first refused to consider any shortened work week, fearing that similiar demands from other federal workers would start a budget-busting trend at a time of general spending cuts.

RETIREMENT. Claiming that controllers burn out faster than other federal employees, PATCO sought an earlier retirement age and higher pension benefits. At present a controller can retire with half pay at age 50 if he has worked for 20 years, and at any age after serving 25 years. Poli asked that retirement be permitted to any controller after 20 years of work and with 75% of his base salary. The Government adamantly opposed this demand as contrary to its entire drive to hold the line against future Government expenses.

After neither side budged during 2½ months of fruitless talks, Poli said on May 22 that his members would walk out a month later if there were no “acceptable” Government proposal by then. The Administration responded by sending Secretary Lewis to replace Helms, whom the PATCO negotiators considered hopelessly rigid, as its chief bargainer.

Just before the June 22 deadline, Lewis offered a $40 million package of improvements. It included a 10% pay hike for controllers who also act as instructors, an increase in the pay differential for nighttime work to 20%, from the present 10%, and a guaranteed 30-min. lunch period (controllers often munch sandwiches at their scopes when there is too much traffic for a break). Poli found the package insultingly stingy.

Poli, however, knew he did not have 80% of all controllers behind him to win a strike vote, as required by PATCO’s rules.

After eleventh-hour dickering, he gained extra retraining benefits for medically disqualified controllers and time-and-a-half pay after 36 hours, though the work week remained at 40 hours. With that, PATCO negotiators called off the strike and put the settlement up for a vote. It was rejected by 95% of PATCO’s members.

When new talks began on July 31, PATCO negotiators claimed that they had reduced the cost of their demands from $1.1 billion to about $500 million. The FAA computed the union package at $681 million—some 17 times the cost of the settlement Poli had provisionally accepted earlier. Poli, on the other hand, insisted that the federal negotiators “gave us an ultimatum: take their original offer, which had been overwhelmingly rejected by our people, or leave it. We had no choice but to leave it.” After a final weekend in which both sides stubbornly repeated their frozen positions, the strike began.

When the Administration reacted with its fine-and-fire-’em ultimatum, top Government officials fully expected at least half of the PATCO controllers to heed the warnings and return to work. But by week’s end only 1,260 had gone back to their posts, while fully 80% of the PATCO members still were staying home.

Their defiant stand in the face of the law, and in repudiation of their own employee oaths, was a lonely one. As a strike of taxpayer-supported employees—and such relatively well-paid ones at that—it drew little public sympathy. One supporter was the American Civil Liberties Union, which declared that “the right to strike is a fundamental civil liberty and should not be denied to public employees any more than to private ones.” More significantly, organized labor around the world rallied behind PATCO, an AFL-CIO affiliate. Controllers in half a dozen countries caused delays in flights to and from the U.S. At home, the support was mostly verbal. Accusing Reagan of “harsh and brutal overkill,”AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland argued that every worker, individually and collectively, has the right to withhold his services. Said he: “You don’t solve the problem by passing a law that says it’s illegal.”

Kirkland led a caravan of top union officials, who were attending an AFL-CIO executive council meeting in Chicago, to join cheering PATCO pickets at O’Hare. The labor leaders included United Auto Workers President Douglas Fraser and William Winpisinger, president of the machinists’ union that handles airline baggage and services the big jets—duties that, if stopped, could quickly ground most of the planes. Winpisinger urged Reagan to stop “union busting” and to “get rational and sit down to negotiate an agreement.”

Privately, however, the labor leaders were highly critical of Poli for calling an unpopular strike with so little warning and without seeking the help or advice of other veteran union strategists. The controllers’ strike, conceded Fraser, “could do massive damage to the labor movement. That’s why PATCO should have talked to the AFL-CIO council.” The machinists were not crossing PATCO picket lines, but at most airports they could get to their jobs without doing so. If more flights are curtailed by the strike, the machinists fear that airlines will cut back their jobs. The Air Line Pilots Association, another AFL-CIO union, had not joined the strike. Reflecting such inter-union strains, Winpisinger said that the pilots could lose half their jobs, too, and added tartly: “They ought to be a little bit more excited about it than us, since they make 2½ times as much as we do.”

Poli was also criticized by other unionists for failing to try to explain the issues to members of Congress and for even refusing the offer of a public relations firm to help him get his union’s story across to the public. Said one labor insider about Poli: “He may be a good traffic controller, but he is over his head as an administrator and political strategist.” A former PATCO official said acidly of Poli: “He’s taking his members on a trip to Jonestown with a few gallons of Kool-Aid.”

Despite a genuine spirit of camaraderie, the picket lines were not without expressions of fear and even some criticism of Poli’s strategy. At New Jersey’s huge Newark Airport, a controller with eight years experience said sadly, “I never thought it would come to this. I thought Reagan was bluffing.” Poli, he said, should have taken the court injunctions banning the strike as a reason to surrender with honor. “He could have said that he didn’t want to give the Federal Government an excuse to bust the union and that he was ordering us back under protest. I think he blew it.” Sandi Engel, a controller at Illinois’ busy Aurora center, is married to a union welder who opposes the strike. Says she: “Every morning he tells me, ‘What you’re doing is illegal. You’re going to jail.’ ”

Any doubts, however, seemed much in the minority. At a noisy PATCO rally in Hollis, N.H.,* Controller Joe Gannon, 39, noted the nonstrike oath he had taken but observed: “I have a much higher oath. I could not bring myself to the position of handling all those aircraft under the stresses I was being subjected to, knowing that I was affecting hundreds of lives. I had a moral obligation.” Picketing at New York’s J.F.K. Airport, Pat Hagen, 36, said firmly: “Some of us may goto jail. I don’t think I’d be normal if I wasn’t frightened, but I’m not intimidated. This union is tight, almost like a family.”Walking beside him was his own family, Wife Diane and three children.

Said she: “I can tell when he walks in the door, by the slant of his shoulders and the way he’s holding his head, that he’s had a bad day.”

Almost unanimously, certainly wishfully, the striking controllers predict that the Administration’s plans to replace them will not work. Contended Controller Dick Holzhauer at an Oakland, Calif., radar center: “If we hang together, I know they can’t run the system without us. They’re going to want their pound of flesh, but they’ll settle.” Asked Controller Roger Hicks at Houston Intercontinental Airport: “Where are they going to get 13,000 controllers and train them before the economy sinks? The reality is, we are it. They have to deal with us.”

Both Secretary Lewis and the FAA’s Helms argue that the striking controllers can be safely replaced, though Lewis concedes that air traffic would have to be reduced from former levels for as long as 21 months. Lewis claims that last week’s experience shows that, contrary to the controllers’ decade-old refrain, the 17,500-controller system is overstaffed, perhaps by as many as 3,000 workers. Another 3,000 supervisors as well as 2,000 nonstrikers were working. Lewis would also close as many as 60 small airport towers, freeing 1,000 controllers for other duty. These closings began last week. Thus, in the end, 7,500 new controllers would have to be hired and trained.

All that would take time, though Lewis claimed that some 20,000 people have inquired about becoming controllers since the strike began. The FAA’s Oklahoma City training school was considering a triple-shift, six-day weekly schedule in which it could produce more than 5,500 graduates in a year, even allowing for the normal failure rate of 20%.

Can the U.S. air-control system undergo nearly a complete change of staff and still function safely? The sheer magnitude of the undertaking would suggest not, at least for a while. Yet Jerome Lederer, founder of the private Flight Safety Foundation and one of the nation’s most respected aerospace safety experts, is confident that it can. He warns, however, that all the operators of aircraft, from corporate jets to jumbo airliners and giant cargo planes, must “not be permitted to overload the system.” The FAA vows to keep traffic limited to the ability of the substitute, newly developing staff to handle it.

That will mean grave inconveniences in a jet-dependent age, but, carefully done, probably no serious diminutions in the standards that have made America’s air-traffic control system the best in the world.

For a public that may need constant reassurance, there will be an independent, ongoing reliable source; the airline pilots themselves. The moment the strike began, their own union, ALPA, started monitoring every flight’s safety conditions.

Says ALPA President John J. O’Donnell:

“So long as airline pilots continue to fly their appointed routes, the public can be assured it is safe.”

—By Ed Magnuson. Reported by Gary Lee/Washington and Peter Stoler/New York, with other U.S. bureaus

*Calvin Coolidge, whose picture decorates the Reagan Cabinet room, earned a national reputation as Massachusetts Governor in 1919 for breaking a Boston police strike. But as President, Coolidge declined to take on striking coal miners in 1927.

*Not all labor protests require a high decibel count. Last week members of West Germany’s Bavarian State Opera struck in their own fashion: In Act III of Die Meistersinger, to the astonishment of the audience, they simply walked through their parts, mouthing their lyrics without making a sound.