Topline
Air traffic controllers are working six 10-hour days a week without pay, putting additional stress on an already “critically understaffed” workforce, says the union chief representing them—as President Donald Trump blamed any resulting flight delays on Democrats.
Trump told reporters Tuesday that any flight delays during the shutdown were “Democrat delays.”
Air traffic controllers are scheduled to receive a partial paycheck on Oct. 14 and a zero paycheck on Oct. 28, Nick Daniels, president of the 19,000-member National Air Traffic Controllers Association, told Forbes.
Due to the ongoing air traffic controller (ATC) shortage, where the workforce is operating at 26% below full staffing, the average controller works six 10-hour days a week with just four days off every month, according to Daniels.
In the last government shutdown in 2018-2019, an increase in absenteeism by air traffic controllers was a key factor in President Donald Trump’s decision to end the shutdown, it was widely reported at the time.
“In a job that's already stressful, this shutdown has put way more stress on our controllers,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told reporters at Newark airport Monday, while blaming Democrats for the shutdown.
Air traffic controllers are working without pay during the shutdown, and will only get their back-pay restored after a shutdown ends. “They're already stressed, they're already fatigued, morale is already low, but they're going to show up to do the job,” Daniels told Forbes. In a notice on its website, NATCA is warning its members that the union does not support a “coordinated activity that negatively affects the capacity of the [National Airspace System]” and that “participating in a job action could result in removal from federal service.” Daniels told Forbes he does not expect an organized “sick out” by air traffic controllers during the shutdown, but acknowledged that missed paychecks will add to the toll of working in an already “critically understaffed” system. “It's lingering in the back of their minds—the uncertainty, the fear, how long does this last?” he said, characterizing the ATC workforce as young, early-career workers starting families. “It's not like they have a ton of backup and residual income, and they don't have other ways to bring in that income.”
While air traffic controllers are allowed to call in sick during a shutdown, they are prohibited from organized job actions as a form of protest. “It is not only illegal, but it also undermines NATCA’s credibility and severely weakens our ability to effectively advocate for you and your families,” a message on the union’s website said.
Whether an extended shutdown will lead to increased absenteeism and attrition among air traffic controllers. Historically, it has. “When they missed a paycheck, that's when there started to be trouble,” Mary Schiavo, inspector general at the Department of Transportation (DOT) from 1990 to 1996, told Forbes. “Over time, more employees started taking sick leave and absences went up tremendously” due to stress, she said. For today’s air traffic controllers, “we need to ensure their mental health is looked after, ensure that everybody is okay,” Daniels told Forbes, adding that the government shouldn’t “give an excuse for somebody to go look for a different job when we need them and want them in this career.” DOT “spends millions of dollars to train us how to reduce stress, how to reduce fatigue, how to reduce unnecessary distraction in the control room,” Daniels said. “And when a shutdown occurs, then we've added that stress back into the system.”
Air traffic controllers “are thinking about: Am I going to get a paycheck? ... How am I going to pay my mortgage? How do I make my car payment? ... How do I put food on the table? ... Do I have to take a second job and drive an Uber when I'm already exhausted from doing a job that's already stressful, to think about how I can make extra money because the government may not provide me a paycheck?” Duffy said at the Newark press conference Monday.
During the last government shutdown, the decades-long shortage of air traffic controllers combined with a tipping point of absenteeism forced the Federal Aviation Administration to drastically limit traffic into a handful of major airports. On the day of a missed paycheck in January 2019, six air traffic controllers called in sick in New York, leading to more than 600 flights delayed at LaGuardia Airport that day, CBS News reported. Disruptions there and at other airports reportedly led Trump to agree to end the shutdown. At the time, a White House official told CNN the air traffic delays played a key role in Trump backing down. “Planes have to keep flying,” the official said. “He knows this has to end.” Daniels pushed back on the idea that there was an organized “sick out” of controllers during the 2018-2019 shutdown but acknowledged to Forbes that “the human toll is real” during shutdowns and some controllers took sick days, often to manage stress.
While air traffic controllers are required to work without pay during the shutdown, the FAA furloughed 11,000 employees, about 25% of its workforce, according to a Department of Transportation shutdown plan. Among the furloughed are 2,350 support staff who work directly with air traffic controllers, cuts Daniels said can undermine the ability for controllers to have the most up-to-date information. “If we only had one pilot instead of two, they wouldn't even take that plane off,” he said. “The other thing that happens in shutdown is management has to fill more of the roles, when they might already be doing 60% overtime,” Schiavo told Forbes. “In general, facilities that had problems before the shutdown will still have problems in the shutdown.”
45,000. That’s the average number of flights managed by air traffic controllers in the U.S. a single day.
FAA Hits Bottleneck For Training Air Traffic Controllers (Forbes)