Reagan and the PATCO Strike of 1981

REAGAN AND THE PATCO STRIKE OF 1981 On August 3, 1981, nearly 13,000 of the 17,500 members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) staged a walk out and strike. There were four main reasons the union members of PATCO decided to go on strike. First, to address the concerns by members who felt that their work was seriously undervalued and under-rewarded. The second reason was that the Federal Aviation Administration had neglected serious deficiencies in staffing and hardware reliability. Thirdly, their work week was unreasonably long, especially when compared to controllers overseas. The fourth reason for the strike was the FAA’s (FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION) approach to management-union relations and the safety of the system. The 1981 strike can be traced back to as early as the 1930’s, through postwar 50’s and up to the strike. From the beginning the controllers had always been underappreciated for the work they had done. As the numbers of unmonitored aircraft filled the air, private airline companies started up networks of air to ground radio systems to broadcast aircraft altitudes, directions of travel and speed. By 1934 the federal government stepped in and created the first modern air traffic control (ATC) regulatory system. In June of 1956, when two avoidable air tragedies in a 12 day period claimed 202 lives, a subsequent investigation found that air travel was unsafe because we had let the air traffic control system become “outmoded and overloaded.” As a result, in 1958,

2

the newly formed Federal Aviation Administration was authorized to modernize and expand the ATC roles. Still, for the next thirty years, air traffic controllers continued to worry about the continued neglect by management towards equipment and safety. In 1963, another midair collision brought attention to air traffic control and this time the investigation uncovered issues with the department created to prevent