- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@lemmy.bestiver.se
- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@lemmy.bestiver.se
Overtaxed and unpaid air traffic controllers are resigning “every day” due to stress from the government shutdown.
“Controllers are resigning every day now because of the prolonged nature of the shutdown,” Nick Daniels, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, told CNN.
“We hadn’t seen that before. And we’re also 400 controllers short—shorter than we were in the 2019 shutdown.”
Air traffic controllers are federal workers, which means they are part of the approximately 730,000 federal employees working without pay since the shutdown began on Oct. 1.
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Democrats proposed a bill that all Federal employees get paid during the shutdown. GOP said no.
The first time I’m reading about this. If the situation were reversed Republicans would be on every show everywhere repeating this taking point.
Democrats need to fucking hammer the Republicans on this 24/7 on every outlet possible.
“Best we can do is fund spoiler candidates after our boy lost the NYC democratic primary”
They should propose a bill that makes a lapse in appropriations trigger a CR so there’s no need for a shutdown.
What is CR in this context?
Continuing resolution. Basically if they can’t make a new budget the old one gets used.
… kinda like every other sensible nation ON EARTH. Sigh.
Not really.
In Canada and other parliamentary type systems, failing to pass a budget triggers an election.
Good point. That definitely disrupts things to some extent – but the government doesn’t literally stop everything, AFAIK. Don’t departments still get their funding throughout, until the new government passes another budget?
No, you are right, things don’t just stop when that happens. I imagine funding could lapse if it was about to lapse, but just because there isn’t a budget passed yet doesn’t mean its immediately going to lapse.
If we somehow had a budget fail, and for some reason took 6 months to have an election (would never happen), we might run into funding issues?
God, that sounds so nice. If you play these stupid games then you instantly end up on the chopping block. That fixes so many issues.
To be fair, our FPTP system does tend to create majority governments so this wouldn’t ever be an issue then as they can pass anything they want. We might be having an election though if this current minority government budget fails which it might.
It’d be nice if we could move to proportional representation though as majority governments are almost always with well less than 50% of the vote and vote splitting fucks things up for center/ledt parties and let’s the conservatives win more because they consolidated into 1 party including all the extreme right whackjobs
Didn’t have that until a decade or so back? Thought I remembered we switched to this system so Republicans could reevaluate each time/hold everything hostage…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_shutdowns_in_the_United_States#Overview
Shutdowns have occurred since 1980 when the Justice Department issued a legal opinion that government operations need to cease in a lapse of appropriations to prevent violation of the Anti-Deficiency Act. I believe the opinion was rendered during the Carter Administration.
Ah, thanks for the correction!
Hey, no worries. That’s how we all grow. I’m wrong all the fucking time.
Kinda weird that’s not already the default behavior.
As with most dishes, a sauce would be wonderrful
The bill is called “The true shutdown fairness act”, and it is a poorly named response to the republican “shutdown fairness act”.
The main differences between the bills (which aren’t really covered in the news, but you can read the bills) is that the shutdown fairness act was limited to excepted employees (those who have to work without pay), as well as some military personnel and some contractors. But it gave trump discretion about who could get paid, and did nothing for furloughed employees, nor guarantee all service members or contractors get paid (again, because it allowed trump to pick and choose)
The true shutdown fairness act aimed to ensure all federal employees and service members get paid, and prevent mass firings during the shutdown. I don’t know/understand why this bill was rejected (I’ll edit if I can find anything)
This post and this post go into a bit more detail.
Edit: I can’t find a news article with direct quotes, but this is part of the ai overview (so take it with a grain of salt)
Underlying reasons: Democrats opposed the Republican bill because they felt it would grant the President too much power to decide which employees would be paid and which would not. Republicans, in turn, blocked the Democratic bill, with Johnson expressing concern that it would limit the President’s ability to manage the government and potentially reduce the workforce.
I hope we can all agree that people should not be furloughed or working without pay during this shutdown but something I haven’t seen reported on is the effect this will have on economies locally and nationally.
Napkin math so someone correct me if needed:
- 4.5 million furloughed or working without pay.
- Average salary I found was $68,000 but let’s use 50,000 to account for the top paying jobs probably still getting paid.
- That gives us $4,166 monthly.
- For each month of shutdown that comes to $18,747,000,000 that isn’t being spent
While I’m sure most of us Americans could do with less consumption, I can’t help but wonder how many small businesses are going to suffer from this. This is especially true for areas with large amounts of federal employment.
There are actually projections for the economic downturn to come that do and don’t factor in the government shutdown reaching thanksgiving, then Christmas. So it is being considered in terms of consumer spending as a whole, but you mentioned small businesses specifically, and they are the ones that will be hurt more than anyone in what’s to come. Although, I’m seeing more and more local-only-economies pop up, where you all try to keep money within the network of the community.
The projections I saw were for the economy to level off by 1Q 2026, but if the shutdown reaches Christmas, it’ll actually shrink an entire point.
A plane is gonna crash because of overworked atc and then they’ll declare it terrorism and invoke martial law.
Mark my words.
We all know the real reason is DEI! /s
Bah, they will just blame democrates…
WHY can’t these GREEDY Air Traffic Controllers just BUCKLE DOWN so until we can CONFIRM that STARVING CHILDREN WILL NOT BE GETTING FOOD and that HEALTH CARE INSURANCE WILL BECOME UNAFFORDABLE FOR AMERICANS?
So we can expect massive problems going into the busiest travel time of the year?
Thanks, Obama!
Also next year and the year after since this is a permanent reduction in the workforce.
Thanks Reagan!
Ahh Reagan, he may not be the only one that caused us to get to where we are, but he did a phenomenal job teaching the next generation how to fuck up everything for everyone.
He’s pretty much directly responsible for the atc problems. Their union went on strike during his presidency and he did mass firings and union busting. It takes years to fully train and qualify an atc and the job has an incredible amount of stress. They aren’t easy to recruit and train. We’ve had a national shortage of atc since his firings. If he had negotiated with them in good faith we wouldn’t have had a sudden shortage that we couldn’t catch up from then and their working conditions would have improved making them easier to recruit and train.
So to be fair, it was illegal for them to strike. No government worker, federal, state, or local, is allowed to strike. This is why blue outs (originally police all calling sick at the same time but now applied to all government workers) are a thing.
So many of today’s problems are because of the Confederate Party, and the kinds of things they did and the things they schemed about since Nixon and since Ronnie Raygun especially.
They were thoroughly outraged that Nixon had to resign in complete disgrace and vowed to combat that in the media space at least. Ronnie Raygun’s maladministration helped to enable that with the dismantling of the Fairness Doctrine…
I mean I wouldn’t want to have a federal position now…. Who knows when you could next be expected to work with no pay for a month or more because a bunch of fascist babies aren’t quite getting their way.
The very last thing you want on a job is old timers who have been through terrible situations and know shortcuts and tricks to get through it.
Institutional memory? Bah! We have MBA’s!
They’re gonna stick AI in there and then the body count is gonna skyrocket.
Oh lord… and you know that there is someone actually considering this too.
Do what now?
I say good. People need to feel this and they need to know exactly why it is happening. It needs to be undeniable.
Sounds like no one invited you anywhere for Thanksgiving.
Funny how some people are always ready to have other folks suffer for a good cause.
Lol yeah you got me.
I have to believe that you are purposely misconstruing my comment. I don’t want any of this to happen. I have, however, been paying close attention to politics for over two decades now, and I know what it takes for even a small % of these people to ever consider changing their minds about politics.
These people are pathologically stubborn in the face of new evidence. They will do the exact opposite of what a scientist says they should do simply because they made them feel stupid for suggesting they might know better.
They also believe empathy is evil, and therefore a huge chunk of them are literally incapable of grasping something until it affects them directly. We’ve seen it happen over and over and over again.
Right, but the issue here is that nobody agrees on who is at fault. Nobody is given reason to change their minds, because it’s “the other side” causing it, regardless of which side they’re on. It’s a problem that is definitely affecting real people, but “we’re not the ones causing it” is an easy way to ignore responsibility.
That’s not to say the shutdown should end, or that it isn’t obvious that the administration isn’t willing to come to the table, but I don’t think I agree with your above point that there’s anything undeniable to be found.
So, how good is ChatGPT at doing air traffic control?
“Uh… attention all aircraft in the vicinity of JFK… ChatGPT Tower’s got this under control… mostly… just, uh, maintain separation and good vibes.” 😅
I had an Uber rider yesterday that brought up a fairly profound prediction about AI. It’s clear it is poisoning the Internet, but he said “what if this gets people to get off social media and start being social IRL?” I’m paraphrasing and he was much more verbose, but it’s a pleasant thought I’ve been holding onto.
“United 123, turn right 360 lol noscope.” Source: reddit.
“Sounds great! plotting crash course now”
”Controllers are resigning every day now because of the prolonged nature of the shutdown […] We hadn’t seen that before."
Well, none of the other shutdowns have gone on this long. I’m also struggling to remember any shutdown that’s gone on for any length in an economy this clearly bad and heading further downhill. Nor has there ever been a shutdown where the head of the government has said they won’t be paid in the end for time worked. It makes perfect sense for the ATC’s to prioritize themselves, their families and their finances over a system that consistently and chronically under-values them, over-works and over-stresses them, and has explicitly declared it has no loyalty or concern for the people who work there.
Cause this is the longest shutdown in history. The now second longest was during Trump’s first term…
The retired controllers should unionize, and put forth an option for future non-Turdpublican administrations to rehire them for fair wages, compensation, and benefits. It would be cheaper and easier than hiring fresh faces and hoping for the best.
That worked out well in the '80s…
Were they already very short with no hope of hiring enough for years when fired a bunch of them?
Yes
I don’t believe they “resigned” in the 80s. They went on strike.
And then were fired.
Yeah, so not the same thing.
A distinction without a difference.
Do explain how the active ATC employees trying to unionize is the same as retired ATC employees unionizing and offering thier services is not different?
If they try to unionize and strike, it will just get cancelled like biden did with the railroad strike a few years ago. Or knowing trump, they will just get outright fired.
Good. I hope America grinds to a fucking standstill. And that as a result of it, traitorous cowards like Fueher Shitshimself never see the light of day, let alone any position of authority.
Pedo Antoinette might just get the ending he deserves sooner rather than later
He’s planning on using the military to take over the airports, like they did in the Revolutionary War .
He’s not paying the military either, not sure how well that’ll work for him.
As well as it did in the Revolutionary War, I’m sure!
I’m sure this is Bidens fault somehow right? Isn’t that usually how this goes, blame Biden for some shit that has nothing to do with him?
It’s clearly Obama’s fault!
Yup!
Well…if he had gotten the justice department to actually nail Trump, then we might have avoided this.
Thanks Biden
As long aa you can squeeze a “DEMS” in there you’re good to go
I just got off my flight to Mexico. I have no idea if I’m getting home. It wasn’t a dealbreaker for the trip…
Espero que hayas estudiado tu español.
shorter than we were in the 2019 shutdown.
Ah, so there was a shutdown in 2019 as well. Anyone know if there was anything in common between 2019 and 2025? In, idk the American government or something? Any important people in common between 2019 and 2025?
How dare you ask people to do some basic critical thinking!
I fully expect the regime to announce they’re arresting ATC personnel who quit.
