skeeter wrote: [TO: retnavyac]
The Union is the controllers. The FAA are the managers. Almost all of the Local Union Reps do their Union duties on their own time and work traffic with everyone else. Its not a bunch of guys in suits representing controllers, its the controller next to you on his own time standing up on behalf of everyone.

A fundamental problem is generally that the people that are very good controllers like working airplanes and do not want to become a supervisor and sit behind a desk for all except 8 hours per month. So, that leaves the door open for the least qualified, weakest controllers (most of the time) to bid the supervisor jobs and be "in charge." Now you have someone with an inferiority complex "in charge" who gets very little respect from those around him. As I said, its even worse if someone washes out and then comes back here as a manager even though they couldn't certify here.

Its a revolving cycle and it sucks. The answer may be to have good, competent, and reasonable people take the supe jobs so that that's who we will be dealing with down the road. But the prevalent attitude is that anyone that bids a supe job is a traitor that is switching sides during our fight for a contract. I understand both sides of the argument but I feel we would benefit in the long run from having intelligent, competent, and respectable management personnel to deal with.

Another issue that comes up is that the head of the Agency is not a career government employee, they are appointed. They come in with an agenda and then leave and we, the career employees, are the ones that are stepped on to further their careers. Blakey took a $600k job to head a group that she gave 2 multi-BILLION dollar contracts to and Russ Chew went to Jet Blue. Blakey should be in jail. There are many, many complicated problems with how the Agency is run.

Skeeter