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Washington Headquarters Press Release

FAA Calls for Federal Mediation to Achieve Voluntary Contract Agreement with Controllers Union

WASHINGTON, DC — Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Administrator Marion C. Blakey today called for federal mediation to help the agency reach a voluntary contract agreement with the air traffic controllers union. The FAA’s request, hand- delivered to the union today, seeks help from the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) to reach a voluntary agreement and comes after four and a half months of negotiations.

We want a voluntary agreement and we need to move ahead, said Marion Blakey. Our workforce needs to know what to count on and so does the aviation community who pays the bill.

The FAA’s contract proposal maintains the base-pay of current controllers, who are among the highest paid federal workers. Additional automatic pay increases will not continue, but current controllers will still be eligible for annual, merit-based pay increases. The agency’s proposal also provides managers with greater flexibility to staff, schedule and operate air traffic facilities in order to ensure staff levels are adjusted to meet daily, seasonal and long-term changes in air traffic, Blakey added.

The FAA is also proposing to bring in new hires at a more realistic pay scale, one that narrows the pay gap between controllers and the rest of the FAA’s safety focused employees and is pegged to the civil service pay scale.

Our air traffic controllers are and will continue to be highly competent, highly compensated professionals, said Blakey. But the hard facts are that the taxpayers and travelers cannot afford the union’s current proposal.

The union is proposing to raise the average total compensation of all controllers above $200,000 in the next four years and add $2.6 billion to the FAA’s payroll over the life of the contract, Blakey said. The union’s proposal also would limit the agency’s ability to fund hiring of a new generation of air traffic controllers over the next decade, Blakey warned.

The union is calling for a guaranteed annual pay increase of 5.6% as well as a shorter workday of 7 hours, which includes a 30 minute paid lunch break. This 12 percent decrease in productivity comes when controller time-on-position, the actual time spent controlling aircraft, at the FAA’s largest facilities already averages less than 4.5 hours per day.

The cost of the controllers’ union proposal also jeopardizes the FAA’s long term ability to hire 12,500 new controllers over the next decade to meet the pending controller retirement wave.

The FAA has a good plan for meeting our controller hiring targets, but only if we can control operating costs, said FAA Chief Operating Officer Russ Chew. We could not possibly afford to replace the number of controllers that will be retiring under the union’s current proposal.

The FAA began contract negotiations with the union on July 13. The existing contract expired on September 30, but has an evergreen clause that allows the original contract to remain in place so long as talks continue.

Responsibility for mediation of federal contracts rests with the FMCS. Created nearly 60 years ago, the FMCS is an independent agency dedicated to promoting conflict resolution, successful bargaining and labor-management cooperation. With its headquarters in Washington, DC and more than 70 field offices, the FMCS provides mediation services to industry, government agencies and communities.