Hi Bexil;
Our contract negotiations are at impasse and have been passed on to the Congress to either do something with them or not... If not, then the FAA gets to impose their work conditions upon us with NO contract. You can go to
www.fairfaa.com to see what we are up to. If it does indeed get too ugly I will retire this year. Not that I wanted to, but I am not going to work for someone who doesn't care for their employees.
As to contracting out, I expect that there will be more contract towers coming in the not to distant future. The FAA is talking about taking almost all the smaller approach controls and moving them to the larger ones, then making them co-located so that they are not actually one facility, that way they can keep the wages low, even though they will now be in higher cost of living areas. They are also talking about separating out the areas in large approach controls as well as enroute centers (or is that centres <G>) and paying them based on the area pay. That too would be less. If this all comes to pass, you are going to see a MASS exodus of controllers when they come up on retirement...
Take care
Scott