Hello from the USA.

[FourHourClub]

I find this forum to very interesting and entertaining. I was looking up some overseas registrations of aircraft when I stumbled across it.

I am a retired FAA Automated Flight Service Specialist, now working for Lockheed Martin, the company that took over the AFSS system in the US last year. (At least I was able to retire) And with the NATCA negotiations breaking down, I expect that Lockheed may be doing some more taking over.....

See you around.

[BEXIL160]

errm Welcome,

I am intrigued by And with the NATCA negotiations breaking down, I expect that Lockheed may be doing some more taking over.....


Question. What NATCA negotiations? (Scott, help me here buddy).

I wonder if the Rumour that NATS was poking it's head into (a) What used to be level one Towers, or (b) ATFM, in the USA, have any substance?

Best rgds BEX

[Scott Voigt]

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

[BEXIL160]

Thansk for the Update, Scott.

Hmmmm.... and I though our future looked bleak with all this wavy line / fimbles / re branding cr*p :( :(

Best of Luck ol' buddy :ok:

BEX

[Scott Voigt]

I can retire if I need to, so for me at least it isn't so bleak. I would like to pay off the house first, but <shrug> I have other options if needed...

Take care and thanks for the pics..

Scott

[SM4 Pirate]

Hey Scott,

I hear that NATCA has the numbers in congress, what does that now mean?

Cheers
SM4.

[Scott Voigt]

Yes as of yesterday we had the numbers in the House of Representatives, however, I think that we are still a bit short of republicans in the Senate and for this to work, we must have a majority in both houses. As was shown though a couple of years ago when we had another bill that made it through both houses to ward of being privatized, that when the two bills went to conference committee, the administration did something very much out of the norm and forced the ranking majority to change the language of the bill (which is NOT supposed to happen) to make it much more palatable to the President...

I hope that we prevail on this, but considering we are one of the smallest unions around, we are fighting a very uphill battle. The govt. has most everything on their side, including the fact that most folks don't care about folks who make a very good salary by most standards. The funny part is that the FAA keeps making it sound like we are demanding a raise when in actuallity all we are requesting is status quo... At the end of negotiations, the agency had not budged off of thier initial demand for close to 2 Billion in give backs. We had gotten to the point of 1.4 billion in consesstions, but that wasn't enough for them... <shrug> Our administrator thinks that we are all greedy and there is no way that we would just take our option to retire and give up all that wonderful money. I have news for her, a lot of us have planned for retirement and would have stuck around for a bit because we love the job. Make it so that you dread coming in and then suffer a pay cut on top of it, WHY STAY???? She doesn't get it, she thinks that we are indebted to HER and that we just can't leave...

sigh

Scott

[vector4fun]

I have news for her, a lot of us have planned for retirement and would have stuck around for a bit because we love the job. Make it so that you dread coming in and then suffer a pay cut on top of it, WHY STAY???? She doesn't get it, she thinks that we are indebted to HER and that we just can't leave...
sigh
Scott

You and me both buddy. I'll retire and refinance the house out to 30 years if I have to. I have no intention of being a whipping boy after 26 years....