Does America hate air traffic controllers?

Granted, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization grossly overplayed its hand back in 1981 - gambling that a national strike would give it a strong hand in contract negotiations - only to be shown the door by a thoroughly unamused Ronald Reagan (whom PATCO had ironically backed in the 1980 election). Still, that's all water under the control tower - or is it? For a vital (and relatively well-paid) profession entrusted with thousands of lives every second of the day, air traffic controllers get fairly short shrift. Now the Federal Aviation Administration wants to cut the number of controllers across the country by 10 percent, citing less traffic for people to actually control. Of course, tragic recent experience has shown us what can happen when there aren't enough controllers on duty, but that hasn't stopped the FAA from pushing lower staffing levels. Some controllers call the move part of a backdoor cost-cutting measure: controllers who quit in response to the FAA's new rules will be replaced by staffers who make less money. At any rate, the cutbacks come at an odd time as two-thirds of the controllers will be retiring anyway in the next decade.

The staffing cuts represent the latest insult to an increasingly unhappy workforce, one already saddled with tougher schedules, salary caps, and (of all things) new and more strict dress codes.

Explaining why the dress code matters, [FAA Administartor Marion C.] Blakey said there are “folks who push outside the norms of what is professional dress and what’s professional behavior.”

The dress code bans jeans, as well as T-shirts and shirts with big lettering and requires that controllers not appear “disheveled,” rules that are not onerous, she said.

Because, you know, air passengers are completely disheartened by the fashion choices of traffic controllers. It's no wonder some people are afraid to fly.

You get the feeling that twenty-five years after PATCO, we're still taking air traffic controllers out of the tower and to the woodshed.

(Cross-posted.)