This hiring freeze is serious and hiring this Fiscal Year does not look good. Here in Eastern Region I have info from 2 top sources that they only have the budget to hire 10 people for FY 04'. FY 05' does not look much better.
Marion Blakey testified before congress in February that the FAA has plenty of controllers, she just needs us to work a complete 8 hour day. There is a lot going on that I cannot post on a public board... at my facitlity (and many around the country) there has been a full out assult by management and it is coming from the very top (White House). It will only get worse if Bush gets elected again.
There will be no more regions as we know them now... With the new Air Traffic Organization run by the former executive at AA the whole structure is changing, I'm told all hiring is going to be done through OKC.
Below is an article to give you folks some background.
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Wednesday, March 24, 2004
How the Federal Aviation Administration will contain personnel costs in a tight budget environment, while at the same time working to replace an anticipated wave of air traffic controller retirements over the next few years, was a major focus of a March 17 hearing before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Treasury, and Independent Agencies.
In discussing the administration's $13.97 billion fiscal year 2005 budget request for the agency, FAA Administrator Marion C. Blakey told the subcommittee that one of her major objectives is reducing operating costs.
Kenneth M. Mead, inspector general for the Transportation Department, noted that reducing operating costs is difficult at FAA, in which approximately 73 percent of its operating budget for the FY 2005 planned budget is composed of salaries and benefits. Last year, he noted, the average base salary for FAA employees was $87,000. Mead estimated that the base salary in 2004 for air traffic controllers will be approximately $110,000.
Collective Bargaining MOUs.
Blakey said that FAA has taken steps to rein in rising personnel costs through changes to the oversight of the collective bargaining process with employees represented by the National Air Traffic Controllers Association.
Amendments to past basic bargaining agreements were put in place through memoranda of understandings (MOU), which sometimes greatly increased FAA personnel costs, Blakey said.
Mead told the committee that "FAA had virtually no controls over the process" for approving these MOUs. One renegotiated MOU, he noted, allowed air traffic controllers to be paid at the higher rate for a position they were to transfer into prior to having actually started to work in the new position.
Over the past year, FAA has implemented "a strict new internal process for reviewing all labor agreements," Blakey said.
As part of a two-year extension of its agreement with NATCA, reached Dec. 9, 2003, the union agreed to rescind many of the most costly outstanding MOUs, Blakey added.
Pay-for-Performance.
Blakey noted that the renegotiated contract extension with NATCA also approved implementation of a more extensive pay-for-performance compensation system (41 GERR 1233, 12/16/03).
Negotiations are ongoing with the Professional Airways Systems Specialists union over instituting expanded pay-for-performance coverage for employees represented by PASS at FAA, Blakey said.
In his written testimony, Mead said that 78 percent of FAA's workforce now is covered by a pay-for-performance plan, up from 36 percent at this time last year.
"We are committed to negotiating pay-for-performance with our unions until 100 percent of our workforce is under the system," Blakey said.
Subcommittee Chairman Ernest Istook (R-Okla.) called the FAA's request an "extremely challenging budget situation," noting that the high incidence of overtime pay at the agency did not make budgeting easy. He told Blakey that FAA overtime costs are too high, and he noted that one employee made more than $50,000 last year in overtime.
Blakey said the agency is working to rein in overtime costs.
Mead said the agency has assigned management teams to investigate reports of overtime abuse, but still needs to engage in a nationwide review to determine whether there are systemic abuses of the overtime system.
ATC Attrition, Retirement.
An expected increase in air traffic controller attrition over the next few years poses a significant challenge for the agency, Mead said.
There will be a large increase in the number of controllers who become eligible for retirement, due in part to the tenure of those replacement controllers hired after the 1981 ATC strike, Mead said. The number of controllers eligible to retire will peak in 2007, and over the next nine years FAA estimates that nearly 7,100 controllers will leave the agency. Over the last eight years, FAA has faced attrition of only 2,100 controllers, Mead pointed out.
While it is unclear whether FAA will actually need to replace every one of the expected 7,100 controllers that leave the agency through 2012 due to possible changes in technology and air travel growth, Mead said, "it is clear that as a result of the anticipated increases in attrition, FAA will begin hiring and training controllers at levels that the Agency has not experienced since the early 1980s."
FAA has renegotiated with NATCA so that it may compensate starting controllers in training at rates from $25,000 to $52,000 per year rather than the current average of $79,000 per year, Mead said. Although this will help to control costs, the cost to the agency of conducting the necessary training is not clear, he said.
A final problem is that, due to an MOU limiting FAA's ability to track individual employee work habits, the agency has not yet been able to institute a system to collect productivity data at individual worksites in order to create a labor distribution model, Mead said. Such a distribution system would help the agency to anticipate not only that it will need to hire new controllers, but where those controllers will need to be located, he said.
I would never let that happen! You ever figure out the proper hold entry into Marion? LOL!
