"Battle looms to privatize air traffic"

Saturday, August 23, 2003
 
Battle looms to privatize air traffic 
By Leslie Miller
The Associated Press 


WASHINGTON - Air traffic controllers once again are fighting a bitter battle
with a Republican administration, this time over a proposal to privatize
some of their jobs.

The union representing 15,600 controllers says the plan to expand a program
that contracts with private companies to run control towers at smaller
airports is a step toward privatizing air traffic control everywhere.

The Federal Aviation Administration says it has no such plans and only is
looking to save money.

The dispute is the most heated since 1981, when President Ronald Reagan
fired more than 11,000 controllers on grounds they violated a national
security provision in their contract by striking.

The FAA in 1982 began contracting air traffic control at about 60 small
airports that could not reopen after the strike because of a controller
shortage. Now 219 of the 484 public airports in the United States with
towers have "contract towers."

The government argues that these towers are cheaper to run and as safe as
those operated by government controllers. An agency analysis in May found
that it costs an average of $1.34 million annually to run an FAA-staffed
tower, while the average cost for a similar contract tower is $421,000 per
year.

"This is another example of the special interests pursuing an agenda of job
protection," said Leonardo Alcivar, Transportation Department spokesman.

Higher controller salaries are a major reason for the FAA's rising work
force costs, the Transportation Department's inspector general told Congress
this year. The average base salary for a controller is $106,000, 47 percent
more than the 1998 average of $72,000.

John Carr is the president of the National Air Traffic Controllers
Association, which replaced the federal controllers' union decertified after
the 1981 strike.

"I view it as standing up for the safety of the system," Carr said.

Contract towers often are run by one person at a time. Carr said that makes
that lone controller less accountable because he is unlikely to report
mistakes. The FAA counters that even some government-controlled towers are
at times staffed by one person.

The controllers say the Bush administration showed its intentions earlier
this summer when it threatened to veto a four-year, $60 billion aviation
spending bill if it did not include a provision that allows 69 more control
towers to be privatized. That could affect more than 900 controller
positions.

"They're trying to get away with something here," said Doug Church,
spokesman for the controllers' union. "They don't want to let us get out
from under this whole agenda to outsource."

Fred Feinstein, a senior fellow at the University of Maryland School of
Public Affairs, said the dispute is a skirmish in a war over the
administration's efforts to privatize government jobs.

"The relationship between labor and this administration is awful," Feinstein
said.

Congressional Democrats say they will not approve an aviation spending bill
that turns government-run control towers over to the private sector.

"I will look at every option available to prevent the president from
attempting to privatize the air traffic control system," said Sen. Frank
Lautenberg, D-N.J.

The administration questions why the union is fighting now when it allowed
56 towers to be privatized under FAA Administrator Jane Garvey, who was
appointed by President Bill Clinton. The union points out that it sued the
government in the mid-1990s, claiming the conversion of government-run
control towers is illegal. The case is in federal court in Ohio.

FAA Administrator Marion Blakey says the spending bill merely preserves the
status quo because existing law allows federal controllers to be replaced at
71 more towers.

She has said the FAA has no plans to convert any on the list, which has
existed since 1999. Moreover, she said, the spending bill before Congress
gives 94 percent of all government air traffic control jobs a protection in
the law they did not have previously - guaranteed job security for four
years.

Controllers point out their jobs were protected from privatization in 2000
when President Clinton signed an executive order calling air traffic service
"an inherently governmental function." Last year, President Bush amended
that order by reclassifying the jobs as "commercial, but exempt from
competition."

The bill now before Congress includes 69 towers rather than the 71
originally identified. The chairman of the House Transportation and
Infrastructure Committee, Rep Don Young, R-Alaska, removed the two control
towers in his state.


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