Controllers predict mass exit

Five days after the Federal Aviation Administration asked Congress to settle its long-running contract dispute with the nation's 15,000 air traffic controllers, Seattle-area controllers predicted that a massive wave of retirements will thin their ranks if the FAA's most recent contract proposal takes effect.

"I've got 51 controllers right now," said Dan Olsen, a union representative at the Seattle Terminal Radar Approach Control center, or TRACON, which handles aircraft flying below 15,000 feet that are within a 35-mile radius of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

He predicted half his co-workers would retire in the next year if the FAA plan is adopted. Olsen's comments were part of a nationwide campaign launched Monday by the National Air Traffic Controllers Association union to win public and congressional support in its contract dispute with the FAA.

FAA Administrator Marion Blakey last Wednesday declared that talks with the National Air Traffic Controllers Association had hit an impasse.

Doing so allowed the agency to kick the dispute to Congress, which has 60 days to broker a deal. If Congress is unsuccessful or if it fails to act by the deadline, the FAA can unilaterally impose its best and final offer on the union June 5.

Sen. Barack Obama, a Democrat from Illinois, has introduced a bill that would alter those rules by sending the dispute to binding arbitration if Congress fails to take action.

The bill has 27 Democratic co-sponsors, including Washington Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, but so far no support from the majority Republicans who control the legislative agenda.

Obama sent a letter Friday to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, urging him to bring the bill to a vote before the 60-day deadline expires.

It has been illegal for air traffic controllers to strike since 1955. In 1981, President Reagan fired more than 10,000 controllers when they struck after a protracted contract dispute.

Reagan's move looms large in this year's contract negotiations. August 5 marks 25 years since Reagan's mass firing. Most federal employees are eligible to retire with full pension benefits after 25 years of service.

The FAA went on a massive hiring spree between 1982 and 1985 to refill the nation's depleted ranks of air traffic controllers.

Jim Ullmann is one of 200 controllers at the Seattle Air Route Traffic Control Center in Auburn, which handles traffic ranging from high-altitude commercial jets to tiny general aviation planes in a territory that runs north to the Canadian border and south to Mount Shasta in Northern California.

Ullmann said as many as 25 percent of the center's employees will be eligible to retire in the next two years, and up to 40 percent will be eligible by 2010.

Controllers' pensions are calculated based on an average of each employee's highest three years of pay, Ullmann said.

He said the FAA wants to eliminate cost-of-living adjustments for most controllers. Consequently, he said, there is little financial incentive for anyone who is eligible for retirement to keep working.

"They've already made their 'high three,' so you're going to see mass numbers of retirements," Ullmann said.

The details of both the FAA's contract proposal and the alternative deal offered by NATCA are difficult to discern.

NATCA claims the FAA wants current controllers to take a pay cut and then submit to a pay freeze. They say the FAA also would substantially reduce compensation for incoming controllers. NATCA President John Carr said the move is a bad deal for the next generation of controllers.

FAA claims there is no pay cut in its contract offer — only a scaling back of future increases. The agency admits it wants to reduce pay for new hires by up to 30 percent, but only because money to pay them is going to get scarcer and scarcer as overall federal budgets shrink.

The two sides do agree on one thing: Their competing proposals are $600 million apart.

That is a yawning gap for the normally slow-moving Congress to bridge in less than two months.

David Bowermaster: 206-464-2724 or dbowermaster@seattletimes.com