Small union wages big war on privatization

In 1982, the year after President Reagan fired more than 11,000 air traffic controllers for striking, the Federal Aviation Administration hired private contractors to staff air traffic control towers that had been closed at five small airports as a result of the mass termination. Over the next two decades, in large part as a cost-saving effort, the FAA hired contractors to run another 214 control towers at small and midsize airports. During the same period, the agency rebuilt its own controller workforce at 265 towers and other centers that handle air traffic. In turn, the in-house FAA controllers organized into a new union, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association.

While the federal air traffic controllers were never happy with the contracting-out-NATCA is in the ninth year of litigation challenging the FAA's authority to hire private controllers-they more or less put up with it until the Bush administration took office. Now, the federal air traffic controllers are fighting their biggest political battle since the 1981 strike. They are attempting to block the administration's push for legislative authority to contract out additional control towers.

The fight has stalled a $60 billion, four-year FAA reauthorization bill that would fund airport construction jobs across the country. As of this week, the federal air traffic controllers are ahead in the battle, thanks to an aggressive lobbying blitz launched during the August congressional recess.

Last year, President Bush reversed a Clinton administration executive order that had protected air traffic controllers from further privatization. So, as work got under way in Congress this year on the FAA reauthorization bill, NATCA lobbied hard to prevent the agency from contracting out more jobs.

During debate on the House bill, Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Aviation Subcommittee, inserted a provision blocking air traffic control privatization, except at existing contract towers, in an attempt to stave off an outright privatization ban proposed by full-committee ranking member James Oberstar, D-Minn. The Senate went further than the House, banning contracting at all air traffic control towers and blocking privatization of about 2,700 air traffic support services jobs that the FAA was already pushing toward contractors. The Senate approved the privatization ban provision, sponsored by Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., by a 56-41 vote, with 11 Republicans breaking ranks and voting for it.

The FAA bills enjoyed broad bipartisan support, clearing the House on a 418-8 vote and the Senate on a 94-0 vote in June. But the White House warned that Bush would veto the final legislation if it included provisions that would "inappropriately prohibit the conversion of FAA facilities or functions from the federal government to the private sector."

As House-Senate conferees worked on the legislation in July, FAA Administrator Marion Blakey urged Republicans to amend the privatization bans. In response to Blakey and to the veto threat, Republican conferees left in place a ban on privatization of most air traffic control towers, but added language allowing contracting-out at 69 smaller towers in addition to those already privatized. The number would have been 71, but the conferees exempted two small towers in the home state of House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Don Young, R-Alaska. The conferees also threw out the Senate provision barring privatization of air traffic support services.

Democrats, who were left out of the negotiations, refused to sign the conference report. The Republicans issued the report anyway, just before the August recess, and they planned to seek final House and Senate approval in September. But the recess gave the federal air traffic controllers time to publicize their vehement opposition to the bill.

The controllers issued a barrage of press releases arguing that safety would be compromised if their jobs were contracted out. They charged that Republican conferees had gone against the wishes of the House and Senate, and they complained that the final bill was written without public debate or Democratic input. "I believe it is the road to the full privatization of the air traffic control system," said Ruth Marlin, NATCA's executive vice president. "This was an effort to do it kind of quietly and put it in a huge reauthorization bill. You can't pull off a secret like that."

NATCA bought print, radio, and TV ads. It organized press conferences at airports around the country and conducted polls that confirmed public support for federal air traffic controllers. The union sent letters to members of Congress and to Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta decrying the conference report. The controllers' lobbyists met with members of Congress and their staffs to rally opposition.

NATCA continued its lobbying campaign in September, and congressional Democrats roundly denounced the conference report's privatization provision. Republican leaders appeared to lack the votes to win final congressional approval of the legislation, as sufficient numbers of Senate Republicans sided with NATCA and the Democrats. By October, Republican leaders conceded that they would have to go back to the drawing board, and the four GOP conference leaders began meeting to try to draft privatization language that would pass both chambers and win administration approval.

"The Republicans made a miscalculation," one lobbyist said. "This is a deal that could have been done differently. They could have all held their noses and everyone could have gotten a little bit of what they wanted. NATCA had five weeks to fight it. NATCA has a lot of resources."

Representing fewer than 20,000 workers, NATCA is one of the smaller public-sector unions. But in the 2002 election cycle, its political action committee donated nearly $1 million to political candidates, more than the two largest federal employee unions combined, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. So far in the 2004 election cycle, the PAC has made contributions to 142 House members and 23 senators, with about 60 percent of its contributions going to Democrats and 40 percent to Republicans.

In addition to hefty campaign coffers, one of the union's key strengths is solidarity. The federal government is an open shop, so employees do not have to be dues-paying members to enjoy union benefits. Still, 83 percent of FAA air traffic controllers are NATCA members, compared with 36 percent of the federal workers represented by the two largest unions.

In 1998, NATCA's solidarity helped the union reach a historic labor agreement with then-FAA Administrator Jane Garvey. The controllers secured nearly $1 billion in total pay increases over five years, according to an estimate by the Transportation Department inspector general. Fully certified controllers make an average of $106,000 a year now, a 47 percent increase over the 1998 average of $72,000. The win was even more extraordinary because federal agencies are not required to bargain with unions over pay.

That in part explains Blakey's commitment to gaining additional authority to contract jobs. "The challenge that Administrator Blakey faces is to restore some degree of management control at the agency," said Robert Poole, a privatization advocate at the Reason Public Policy Institute, a Los Angeles-based think tank.

The Bush administration took office promising to make hundreds of thousands of federal workers in most agencies compete for their jobs against private contractors. The "outsourcing" effort has run into bureaucratic difficulties and resistance within the executive branch, as well as increasing skepticism on Capitol Hill. To avoid further setbacks, the administration has issued veto threats against any legislation that challenges the privatization effort in any corner of government. But more than two and a half years into his term, Bush has yet to veto any legislation.

"If the Bush administration caves on this one, it sends a green light on other cases," Poole said. "It would encourage unions in other departments of government to start getting exemptions" from privatization.

Union activists also see the air traffic controller fight as a precedent-setting case. "This is part of the administration's larger plan to pursue privatization at all costs," said Edward Wytkind, executive director of the AFL-CIO's transportation trades department, of which NATCA is an affiliate.

Proponents of contracting-out argue that NATCA's safety argument is specious. They note that a review by the DOT inspector general found that contracted-out towers had safety records similar to those run by FAA controllers. The same review also found that contracted-out towers were less expensive than FAA towers, mainly because of lower salaries.

As the debate rages on, some aviation groups are growing anxious and hope that a compromise is reached soon that will free the FAA reauthorization bill-and the billions of dollars it promises to airports. "This labor-management food fight is getting in the way," said Todd Hauptli, vice president of legislative affairs for the American Association of Airport Executives.

The last major fight between public-sector unions and the Bush administration helped to fuel the bitter congressional debate last year over the creation of the Homeland Security Department. Unions and their Democratic supporters in Congress wanted existing civil service protections extended to the new department's employees; the administration and Republican lawmakers wanted the authority to change the rules.

The administration portrayed that debate as national security versus labor's special interests, and it became an issue in last fall's election. Sen. Max Cleland, D-Ga., lost his re-election campaign in part because Republicans cast him as a supporter of special interests over security. After the election, the administration won the authority to change the civil service rules in the final Homeland Security legislation.

In the fight over the FAA bill, the administration is using a similar argument. But the air traffic controllers are also turning the argument around, charging that Bush is putting contractors' special interests ahead of safety and security. The fight, which technically affects only 69 of the 265 FAA-staffed control towers, has become an ideological struggle between labor and its Democratic allies on the one hand, and the Bush administration and congressional Republican leaders on the other.

"It really is more philosophical and symbolic than it is about the particulars," Hauptli said.