Originally published at: Air Traffic Controllers Brace for Missed Paycheck
Union warns of rising stress and safety risks as Oct. 28 approaches.
The stress of the financial crisis at home is a far greater stress than handling air traffic; at least with the latter you can offer options and solutions that pilots can comply with and everybody gets to go home. But combine the ATC stress with the unresolvable stress of personal finances devolving inexorably into a shambles, with no sick leave time to mull things over—not that mulling will produce any relief—and the result could very well be a rapid mental breakdown that will take months of recovery time. Worse, that sort of mental breakdown is insidious; won’t be apparent until something really goes haywire.
In addition to the emotional stress added to the physical, there are hundreds of controllers at mid and top level facilities who are still working even though they are eligible to retire. This extraordinary state of affairs could very likely induce a wave of retirements that would add even more strain to an already overstressed system.
I worked eight more years after I was eligible to retire, because I loved what I was doing.
One of the issues is that unless there are severe and dire consequences (complete breakdown of ATC services) there will not be any learning in Wasgington. Some feeling tells me that the ATC shortage is about to worsen after this dog and pony show is over.
I made sure I thanked every controller on my recent trip to South Carolina. Everyone was very professional.
Now, I hope this does not sound harsh, but I wonder with folks who I assume are reasonably well paid government workers, how would they not have a 3 or 6-month emergency fund for themselves? I don’t want to minimize the stress, but how much of talk of severe hardship is media or union hype? They will get paid, it’s just delayed. I mean this as a sincere inquiry to those in the know. If I’m way off, someone who has been a controller let me know.
Until the controller on duty is more focused on how they’ll pay their mortgage that month that the two aircraft barrelling towards each other.
Some will have an emergency fund, some won’t. It’s all down to a persons individual circumstances. You can’t assume everyone does and yes, there is going to be media hype in a lot of this stuff.
Thanks. It seems ashamed that ATC are not considered critical employees that get paid. Congress is getting paid.
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