Air Traffic Controllers

Reflective Essay On Case Study  

    —— “Air Traffic Controllers”

Xiang Wang (Sandy)

Northeastern University

Negotiation, Mediation, and Facilitation

March 7th, 2015

Stephen T. Novick, JD, MBA, MS

Reflective Essay On Case Study

             —— “Air Traffic Controllers”

  The Harvard Business Review article called “Air Traffic Controllers” illustrated a vivid example of negotiation. The authors mainly summarized and analyzed the history, negotiations, and aspects of the strike of air traffic controllers unionized under PATCO(Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization) in 1981.

  At the very beginning of the article, the authors introduced that the FAA(Federal Aviation Administration) was an organization which was established to offer the regulation and promotion for civil aviation and was in charge of training and employing every air traffic controller. Air traffic controllers were responsible for the information of flying planes, such as the position of a particular plane. However, there were a series of problems appeared, which were the signals of the strike.

  The primary issue was that air traffic controllers were over-stressed, since they had to work eight hours and had only one lunch break everyday, but they were still underpaid. In addition, an oversupply of controllers working for FAA and the popularity of computerization made large numbers of controllers unemployed. Furthermore, there was a bad work environment for controllers. For example, many supervisors of the controllers were educationally deficient, and they only had a high school education.

  Based on these problems, there were some negotiations between PATCO and the FAA in order to achieve a desirable result for controllers, but these negotiations were failed at last and the strike happened.

  The main goals for strikers were to get better pay, decrease working hours and improve the overall working conditions based on the stresses of their jobs. Instead of being proactive, the federal government made various countermoves. President Reagan ordered that all negotiations with PATCO came to an immediate halt and stated that any striking air traffic controller who failed to report to the work within 48 hours would be terminated.

  As a result, more than 12,000 air traffic controllers were fired and they even found that it was very difficult for them to search new jobs, which directly caused unemployment rates escalated in the country and cost the government billions of dollars even if the government was successful in its breakup of the union and the strike.

  The conflicts between these two parties can be totally avoided. Both sides only focused on their own positions so that they failed to negotiate for the favorable terms and conditions for a common ground.

  For instance, PATCO was not effective with its communication, because controllers were very quick to strike rather than offer counters to the government. They spent too much energy to emphasize the strike itself and fixated on their demands to be successful, which ultimately made its members unemployed for many years. It would have had a distinctive result if the organization had paid more efforts on the problem instead of “people”. Besides, PATCO overreacted with its attempted negotiations and demanded far too much for a job that required a high school diploma and three years of general work experience. There are indeed stresses that come with the job, but before starting a job, it is also very significant for people to understand the job description and the compensation structure. So PATCO certainly did not handle well its own responsibility.

  The government also did not take wise actions to deal with this event. The government solely noticed the money issue including pay raise for night shifts, retirement payments, etc. However, what they should pay more attention was not about money, but well-beings of the controllers. Just as Dr. Robert Rose in Boston said, the problems of the controllers were not their economic conditions and the FAA should make more efforts to improve its labor relations. It might be necessary to for the government to take repressive measures, but a policy of appeasement was also required.