On August 3, 1981 almost 13,000 air traffic controllers went on strike after months of negotiations with the federal government. During the contract talks, Robert Poli, president of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Association (PATCO), explained the union’s three major demands as a $10,000 across the board raise, a 32-hour workweek (down from 40), and a better retirement package. While the press and hearings in Congress focused almost exclusively on the demand for a pay raise, certain commentators recognized that the air controllers’ walkout was not solely, or even primarily, an economic issue.
Newsweek noted that “controllers concede that their chief complaint is not money but hours, working conditions, and a lack of recognition for the pressures they face. ” Time wrote that the 32-hour week was “a reduction that the controllers seem to want more than the pay increases. . . . most PATCO members see this issue as the key to lowering their on-the- job anxieties and enhancing safety. ” One striker later explained that the $10,000 demand “was always negotiable; anyone who believed it would come to pass was dreaming.
Of primary importance to most was a reduced work week and an achievable retirement. ” 1 Such views had little effect on negotiations; 48 hours after the walkout, President Reagan fired the 11,350 ATCs (almost 70% of the workforce) who had not returned to work. In case the message was still unclear, he declared a lifetime ban on the rehiring of the strikers by the FAA. The dramatic circumstances surrounding the strike attracted much commentary, at the time and subsequently.
This attention, however, for the most part, failed to uncover or illuminate the fundamental issue under contention: control of the workplace. A study of the relationship over several years between air traffic controllers and their employer, the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA), and the language, reasoning, and actions used by controllers both before and after the strike, as well as the FAA’s responses, 2 reveals the centrality of this fight which has traditionally characterized strong labor action in the past.
Despite the assertions of many that the issue of control has little relevance in the “modern” high-tech workplace and has been superseded by other concerns, it was the galvanizing force behind many controller protests over the years and led to the explosion in 1981 with the strike. Indeed, instead of a redefinition of workplace relations in the twentieth century, the same struggle over control continues, only in less evident, and perhaps more dangerous, ways. Historians have long debated whether workplace control is still a key issue in late twentieth century management-worker relations.
Many scholars and much of society have surmised that the development of new technology and modes of production would alter the terms of, or even eliminate, this conflict. The rapidly changing character of world markets and new economic and technological advances would preclude the usefulness of the traditional adversarial relationship fostered by unions and managers at the point of production and replace it with a participative model which reduced the need for work rules, grievance systems, and wage standards.
With the restructuring of the workplace as a “caring community,” traditional dissatisfaction would “dissolve in an atmosphere of unity and good feeling” and do away with conflict and division. New technology would allow workers to perform more creative, useful, and interesting tasks; reduce hazards at the workplace; and even lead to less hours and more leisure time. 3 Harry Braverman, in his classic book Labor and Monopoly Capital (1974), disputed this optimistic view of change in the twentieth century workplace.
He instead presented work (in capitalism) as inherently geared to the creation of profit rather than the satisfaction of man’s needs, thus ensuring a fundamental conflict of interest between workers and capitalists. As management systematically attempted to reach the potential of its labor in the face of antagonistic relations, it looked to scientific management theory, as well as technology, in order to better control labor.
The widespread adoption of Taylorism had only initiated the process of deskilling jobs and removing autonomy, responsibility, and judgement from the shop floor, which then continued through other, more sophisticated, and less obvious, methods. 4 Historians David Noble, Harley Shaiken, Barbara Garson, and Ronald Howard have all supported variations of Braverman’s thesis, primarily by studying the effects and implications of technology and automation on blue and white collar workers.
Like Braverman they argue that the primary impetus behind job definitions and the structure of developing technology has generally been to limit worker autonomy further. Cost reduction and profit, frequently management’s explanation for implementing changes in job structures, have thus been only rationalizations masking initiatives basically designed to strengthen managerial control. 5 A study of the reasons for the ongoing strife between the FAA and air traffic controllers, highlighted by the strike, demonstrates how important the issue of workplace control continues to be in late twentieth century worker-management relations.
Moreover, it indicates how factors such as technological advances and the discourse and substance of labor-management bargaining since World War II have served to mask this struggle, often to the disadvantage of the workers involved. The PATCO controversy is particularly useful to illustrating such an assessment for several reasons. First, while air traffic controllers are employees of the FAA, ostensibly the overriding goal of both groups is to assure the maximum safety of air travel.
This presumably removes the traditional conflict of interests between management’s search for profits and workers’ job satisfaction, and would seemingly make for harmonious relations. Since this was not the case, obviously other factors worked to divide the two groups. Second, the FAA possessed a monopoly over the training and hiring of air traffic controllers (except for a small percentage who worked for the military). With specialized skills and usually limited education, most ATCs had little choice but to work for the government.
They therefore had a large stake in work conditions and benefits. The same factors gave the FAA a strong hand in dealing with its workforce. Third, the majority of controllers found their work intrinsically interesting. Most described their occupation as challenging and exciting. As one explained, “the expression is used about printers that they get ink in their blood. We have airplanes in our blood. ” A striker noted in 1984 that “I have been unable to find a job or position that offers the same excitement and personal satisfaction that controlling aircraft did. 6
Such job satisfaction indicates that the complaints of air controllers ran deeper than unhappiness with the occupation per se. Finally, advancing technology played a key role in both the cause and the resolution of the strike. Controllers, for the most part, paid little attention to the implications of automation on their occupation, although PATCO occasionally faulted the FAA’s emphasis on equipment instead of people. Most controllers believed in the centrality and necessity of human skill and judgement to the system. Indeed, they welcomed almost any equipment or programs that might assist them in their work.
At the same time, though, an overwhelming number of individual ATC complaints singled out stress as a primary motive for striking. Greater air traffic volume and increased demands on ATC capabilities made possible by new technology, coupled with faulty equipment and autocratic management that limited workplace autonomy, were the obvious causes of such stress. Yet neither PATCO nor the controllers made this connection explicit or strongly challenged management privilege to decide the nature and purpose of computers in air towers.
Meanwhile, FAA officials clearly saw automation as a means of eliminating dependence on skilled controllers. As an editorial in Aviation Week and Space Technology commented, “few federal bureaucrats have the chance to fire 70% of their departments and replace the victims with lower-salaried recruits–or with computers and black boxes. ” In 1982 J. Lynn Helms (head of the FAA) announced a twenty year program costing between $15 and $20 billion to replace the system’s aging computers and further move towards automating air control.
