Karrank,
First of all I would like to encourage you to visit the National Air Traffic Controllers Web Site Public BBS at
http://www.natca.org/PublicBBS.asp and post your specific questions there.
On the NATCA Public BBS your questions will be answered by some of our Regional NATCA Safety Reps, NATCA controllers (enroute and terminal), and by our esteemd NATCA President.
To answer a few of your questions:
>Do you have a huge increase in workload when the weather is crappy?<
Who's workload doesn't increase because of thunderstorms, or low visibility and ceilings.
>Do you ever pass traffic in Class G or is separation applied regardless?<
We issue traffic and apply separation in accordance with the 7110.65. If I'm providing radar service to a VFR yes I provide seperation and issue traffic, and I always do for an IFR acft.
>Would you ever establish that a flight is clear of controlled airspace to avoid separating it? <
Yes, this would only occur to a VFR aircraft that was receiving VFR flight following. Radar service would be terminated and we would no longer provide separation services or provide traffic advisories.
>Are you senior managers all back-stabbing @ss-holes like ours?<
Thankfully, no, we still have some back stabbing managers, but their numbers are few and still on the decline.
I'm proud to say that we have some managers (locally, regionally, and nationally) who work hard with NATCA to make our job as controllers better, and work with NATCA to improve the system.
Mike