EuroATC;
We have no problem hiring enough people here to become controllers. We have thousands on the roles who want to become controllers. Many of them either contract controllers from college trained facilities or military or off the street with no experience. The problem that we have is the govt. is trying to save money by not hiring anyone. It has nothing to do with not having enough of a pool of talent. We have more than enough of that here.
As to the US bringing in people for jobs that they can't find for Americans. That is a myth. There are Thousands of people clamoring to get into the US to get good jobs as well as a better life style. We don't let anywhere near the amount come in that would like to. Kind of like trying to get to Austrailia or New Zealand <G>...
Now for the folks that are coming in illeaglly, we do have a boat load ( no pun inteneded) of them coming in. These are the folks who are taking the jobs that most Americans don't want. Those are for the most part getting either minimum wage or below, except of course those who have a skill in the building trades.
regards
Scott
(son of imigrants)
Hi Lukewarm;
From what we have seen of the contract facilities, they don't live up to most of the standards that the FAA operates under. About the only one that we see is that the people they hire have taken a CTO ( Control Tower Operaters) test and have passed it. The training that they have done is minimal at best and the staffing that they use at facilites is minimal at best. There are enough folks around for the traffic at the VERY slow places for 80% of the time. But when it does get busy, there is an emergency, the controller is left out to hang. I don't feel that the tax payers are getting their moneys worth.
Now some some of these same companies in other countries run things a little different. It's probably because there is more govt. oversight. Over here, there is very little govt. oversight of the contractor. It is mostly a paper trail oversight and not with actual ATC evaluations and such. No reporting system set up for employees of problems etc... Well, there is the NASA ASRS program, but even this program as good as it is, most of the controllers are afraid to use it... Report bad things, get found out, lose job.
Like I said before, this isn't conjecture on my part. We do represent some of these contract towers and we have heard first hand some of the things that go on. But usually we hear about it after the controller who worked at the contract facility has gotten hired by the FAA and they feel safe enough to talk about it.
regards
Scott