Wed, Feb 12, 2003
The National Air Traffic Controllers Association
is condemning the unprecedented decision -– released late
last week -– by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to
designate air traffic control as a 'commercial activity.'
Controllers say the decision serves as a prerequisite for future
privatization of the U.S. air traffic control system and has
dangerous implications for the safety of air travelers.
"We reject the OMB’s conclusion that the jobs of air
traffic controllers aren’t inherently governmental, or vital
to the safety of the American public," National Air Traffic
Controllers Association President John Carr said. "For this
Administration to federalize airport security workers and then take
steps toward privatizing air traffic control is not only a stark,
head-scratching contradiction in policy, it’s the
continuation of a march toward the erosion of safety in our
skies."
Under the FAIR Act of 1998, government agencies
must declare their job functions to be either commercial or
inherently governmental. Commercial activities are those subject to
contracting out and privatization, while inherently governmental
functions are those which are defined as, "so intimately related to
the public interest as to mandate performance by federal
employees." The law goes on to cite control of space and navigation
as criteria for declaring a function to be inherently governmental,
a fact controllers believe should have taken precedence over the
administration’s ideological philosophy that presumes nearly
half of all government jobs are subject to competitive
outsourcing.
"It’s highly disturbing that the safety of the flying
public is being moved around like a pawn on a political chess
board," Carr stated. "We have the safest, most sophisticated system
in the world. There is no good reason to put that at risk and
introduce it to words like ‘commercial’ or
‘privatized,’ which we have seen in other countries
translates into a degradation of safety standards [not to mention
lower wages and increased work hours --ed]. Contracting out air
traffic control to the lowest bidder is not the direction our
nation should be heading as we work together to keep our skies
safe."
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