Seems like a colossal error to have asked them all to quit.
I wonder -- if half of the air traffic controllers took the offer to leave their jobs, do we have a Plan B? The deadline they have been given to decide is Thursday; I have not seen any communication as to whether ATC (and TSA, etc.) will be operational Friday.
So what does that really mean for those he outright fired? They didn't "resign".no one who (stupidly) responded to that email to resign would have taken any effect anyway.
In a country with the rule of law, employers can't generally take away these kind of things when they've promised them - this got Musk in to trouble when he made a generous severance offer in Europe and had to actually follow through on it.
Tbh I have no idea at this point. I read info he did fire people, but I'm seeing conflicting reports between his actions, intent, the deferred layoffs and later cancelation of the deferred layoffs.
The official investigation report is of course going to take a bit, but the ATC audio is public, and the helicopter was warned twice about the plane, and said they had a visual of the plane.
Besides never missing an opportunity to 'slam' the opposition, I have no idea why this is being construed as an ATC failure.
That's a system failure if there's no way to verify just what plane the helicopter had in its sights. If continuing with visual separation in the same place, ATC may very well adjust their language. It would help to identify where in the sky the plane is. Or, if there's a potential for cutting it close, just getting the helicopter to hold back until the plane lands? We wouldn't let a plant fly 200ft above another plane in any other situation
That's part of the problem here, everyone is just taking political potshots. Which is to be expected. But the danger is you lose sight of the real issue. As you mentioned, the helo pilot's loss of situational awareness. (Did they ever even have situational awareness?)
We can't be getting into these situations where every crisis is met by this typical American emotional reactionism. We can't be blaming the "left", or the "right", or the most ridiculous one which was "it was the black guys somehow". We gotta stop letting that crap distract us.
I think the underlying problem was the irresponsible amount of air traffic that has been allowed in that space. It sounds like the pilot made a mistake any pilot might've made and truly it was just a matter of time until something like this happened given the overcrowded nature of the air traffic in the area.
Operator error is only the first 'why' in the 5 whys for this incident.
> Besides never missing an opportunity to 'slam' the opposition, I have no idea why this is being construed as an ATC failure.
Just saying what I've heard. One issue is that the controller allowed visual separation, to begin with. They say he should have known that it was difficult, especially at night, and shouldn't have allowed it.
Congress keeps approving more flights into DCA over the in hindsight, clear objections by those in charge of safety at DCA, the FAA and several congress people in the minority. Congress people use it as their personal transit hub.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/us/reagan-airport-flights...
Kinda. Collective bargaining rights are great for employees but they do not automatically lead to better outcomes for customers/citizens/etc.
A good counter-example of ATC would be police. Police have strong collective bargaining rights, but mostly came at the expense of accountability and citizen oversight. (And also police departments are still chronically understaffed).
Okay, if not police, then teacher's unions: there's not a lot of available studies, but most point to a non-existent or negative relationship between CBAs and student performance.
Or in the private sectors, non-unionized manufacturers like Toyota and Honda always outperform legacy manufacturers in the US on quality.
I'm not saying there's not a strong argument for unionization, but an improvement in quality is not one backed by any sort of evidence and it's a really weak argument. To put it another way, it would be hard for a unionized employee to outperform a Foxconn employee with no human rights on output quality - but it's not at all the kind of argument we should be making.
> Okay, if not police, then teacher's unions: there's not a lot of available studies, but most point to a non-existent or negative relationship between CBAs and student performance.
I'm going to guess that there are far stronger correlations with household wealth when it comes to student performance than there are whether the students are taught by teachers who are employed under a CBA.
> Or in the private sectors, non-unionized manufacturers like Toyota and Honda always outperform legacy manufacturers in the US on quality.
That could very well be because of how the cars are engineered and made versus the union representation for the people who make them.
GM, for example, tends to build cars in a way as to make them as cheap as possible to build. That lets them compete on price versus quality. You need the car now, after all; what happens in 40k miles isn't as important to you now. Of course, that comes with the risk, like when some essential component on my college girlfriend's Pontiac's shat the bed, and they'd had to take the entire front of the car apart to replace it because it was cheaper to build that way. They've just taken the price of having a functioning vehicle and charged you for it at the mechanic, not the dealership.
Toyota and Honda used to do the opposite, of course. You were going to pay more (depending on exchange rate) upon purchase of the vehicle but the result was that the car wouldn't need as many trips to the mechanic. They've since started doing more value engineering.
There's also a cultural difference between Japanese and American businesses, but that's far more nebulous.
> There's also a cultural difference between Japanese and American businesses, but that's far more nebulous.
The abstract cultural differences might be difficult to articulate, but many of the effects are concrete: Toyota still maintains lifetime employment for Japanese factory employees. And Toyota factory workers in Japan are represented by a union, AFAIU, though like Germany the relationship between unions and management is less adversarial in Japan.
Interestingly, the change in union employment in Japan seems to have tracked the US, from a high of over 50% mid-century to 16% today versus ~35% and ~10%, respectively, in the U.S.
Citation needed, because just a cursory check is showing me plenty of powertrain manufacturing happening in Mexico. Meanwhile if by critical components you mean chips, I don't think there's a big semiconductor manufacturing union that's kneecapping GM. Design is also an apples to apples comparison, it's not a union job.
It was 44 years ago. We have had 6 presidents since then. Every single ATC controller from 1981 is retired, most for over a decade. You probably should be looking at a more proximate cause.
which was a substantial improvement for millions of people. It's worth pointing out that the one (and probably only) good thing I can think of that Reagan did would get him tossed out of today's republican party.
The idea was actually that employers would start to bear some responsibility for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants and thus creating an economic incentive for the migration.
That didn't really happen. You see plenty of roundups of illegal immigrants, many/most are employed. What you don't see ever are roundups of their employers.
If you want to actually see this problem solved immediately all you need to do is show a daily perp walk of the employers on the evening news for a few months.
Several years ago, there was a big immigration raid on a bunch of Tyson Chicken facilities.
They found about 900 undocumented workers.
Many of them gave evidence to officials, including written instructions from Tyson that advised them how to fill out employment, banking, taxation paperwork if they "didn't have documentation" and how to stay under the radar, i.e. Tyson didn't just know they might have undocumented workers, they were facilitating and actively enabling it.
In press conferences, when journalists asked "Are there any plans to investigate the company or issue fines or charges?", the response? "We are not considering that at this time." (And they never did.)
What it ended up looking like was that Tyson had been getting in some trouble, getting bad press for OSHA safety issues and perhaps had decided their undocumented workers were getting a little too angry about poor safety standards, making waves.
It would be entirely unsurprising to me if Tyson made a sweetheart deal with ICE that said "Hey, if you come to these plants, you'll get to make this big stink about undocumented workers" (and this was during the Trump administration), "but in return, can you leave us out of it?", very much shades of "Won't someone rid me of these meddlesome workers?"
True, and I’m sorry for the snarky reply even though I knew what you meant.
But regardless of if this was the fault of Reagan or the largely Democratic-controlled Congress, Republicans in government since then have soured on any idea giving an ounce of amnesty because of it.
Nominated the first female to the Supreme Court, Sandra Day O'Connor, and using his bully pulpit to pressure the Soviet Union about East Germany and the eventual dissolution of the USSR.
He became very popular to hate on in the past midterms because his position that "government IS the problem" is more popular than ever given the last administration. It was a vain effort to preempt what they knew was coming.
Seriously, why else would the name of a president who hasn't served in 40 years suddenly be brought up all the time?
The number that I've heard that accepted that offer across the government is in line with normal attrition rates with federal employees - the only people who bit were already planning on quitting. It appears that most or all else was wise to how shady this deal was.
Part all of this BS is sure at twitter if you pull this you might get a decent attrition rate but isn't the federal government known for people never quitting? If they quit, it's quiet quitting coming in every day and doing nothing. Isn't that generally the purpose behind this too? Like...good luck get a real amount of people to quit they are going to hold on for dear life
> they quit, it's quiet quitting coming in every day and doing nothing
You think air traffic controllers are “doing nothing”? What VA staff, park rangers, food inspectors, etc.? I realize this stereotype is something a lot of people spend money reinforcing but you should consider why you believe it to be true of a nationwide group doing a huge range of jobs and what evidence that’s based on.
I'm convinced a lot of people who espouse this view have never worked at any large[1] private sector organization. My last stint working at a big company included seeing people routinely taking naps at work and generally behaving in the ways people associate with government employees. Smaller organizations are more efficient, but are limited in possible scope of impact.
[1] "large" here generally meaning over 100k employees, relatively concentrated (so a hypothetical org with 5k employees in each of 20 countries likely does not fit). For scale, the US has any number of domestic bases where personnel count exceeds Meta's total staffing, with a couple being roughly the size as Microsoft's US employment.
That matches my experience, too. I’ve worked in .com, .edu, and .gov and people are the same everywhere. The main thing I notice is that there tends to be a lot of selection bias when people talk about the private sector where the most successful companies are used to represent the whole concept, when almost everyone has had to interact with, say, a cable or health insurance company (my local DMV is sooo much better than Comcast).
I thought the buyout offer went along with the cancellation of remote work. Like, if you are thinking about quitting because you don’t want to come in, here have an extra incentive to do that and take some time to find another job.
ATC already couldn’t work remotely. The only people who would take a deal like this would be people who were thinking about quitting or retiring anyway. I suspect ATC will not be substantially affected by people taking that deal.
> I thought the buyout offer went along with the cancellation of remote work.
Your sentiment is a result of their incredibly vague first attempt at messaging.
The offer was (or ended up being) a full buyout offer. The “offer” is probably genuine, but it’s not a clean offer, as many edge cases are unclear (e.g., can they terminate you if they accept the offer… currently there is nothing stopping them from doing that, how can someone of retirement age accept the offer and then retire, etc.).
Iirc, ATCs can accept the buy out if they so chose. I’m guessing most won’t, as the ATC deal is good to stick with until you retire.
Edit: Per the article, the status of the offer is unclear. It wasn’t cleared with the union before the letter was released, and it hasn’t been officially rescinded either (despite comments that it has from DoT).
Sorry to be unclear, I didn’t mean that only people transitioning from remote to in person can take the buyout. I meant that that is what the deal seemed to be targeting based on the timing, like a release valve for people who would be angry about switching back to in person.
> I meant that that is what the deal seemed to be targeting based on the timing, like a release valve for people who would be angry about switching back to in person.
That’s a reasonable take.
I don’t think anyone involved is actually on the same page about targeting or intent. It’s a complete shit show.
I have many fed gov friends, and I’m getting some incredible insider takes.
Interestingly, I think that the idea of reducing the federal work force size has a lot of supporters from both sides of the aisle, but this implementation has been haphazard (at best).
A “good” implementation would remove a lot of “build headcount” positions while also adding/filling positions that are still lacking. ATCs and contracting (to name two) fall under the latter.
> but this implementation has been haphazard (at best).
Also, this doesn't save us any money at all. Congress allocates money and in many cases specifies employment levels. But like the OMB memo says -- taxpayers still have to spend the money for these employees whether they do any work or not.
The reason they are doing this haphazard mess is that their positions are not popular and therefore cannot pass in Congress.
> Also, this doesn't save us any money at all. Congress allocates money and in many cases specifies employment levels.
Hmmm… this is short-term correct (at a minimum), but may not be correct long term. Time will tell.
Yes, the money for current jobs has been allocated/budgeted for the fiscal year, and the folks who resign will actually be paid for not working until the end of the fiscal year.
This is standard buyout stuff, and the government does this every year on a smaller scale, usually targeting high-paid, low productivity employees who are eligible to retire.
That said, what happens next fiscal year? The speculation is that the default will be that the positions vacated will basically be lost — as in, the slot/allocation will no longer exist and will not get funded. I imagine exceptions will exist, but this will create a noticeable reduction in the federal workforce if it ends up this way.
Said another way, paying 8 months for no work is cheaper than paying for 5-10 years of unneeded/inefficient work (at least that’s the theory).
> The reason they are doing this haphazard mess is that their positions are not popular and therefore cannot pass in Congress.
As I mentioned above, I think there is broad support on both sides for cutting and/or right-sizing the federal workforce.
Anyone who has worked in or with the federal government knows about instances of gratuitous headcount growth and substantial underemployment in some areas. There exist grifters who maybe put in 10 hours a week on average of very mediocre work for a salary that they absolutely could not earn outside of the government.
These same people also know about areas of the government that are grossly understaffed, seemingly in perpetuity (ATCs, contracting, etc.) and/or extremely underpaid (e.g., anything in tech).
I think it would be trivially easy to get broad support in Congress to implement changes that fix these problems, but that fix doesn’t start with a hastily written “fork you” all-hands e-mail.
All that said, all of this gratuitous motion is basically a drop in the bucket compared to modest and reasonable changes that could be made in social security, Medicare/medicaid, and/or defense spending.
You are correct that done deliberately, this could show the lack of need for some roles. But as it is structured, it is designed to get the best folks to leave, and from unpredictable parts of the org and thus is unlikely to show that result.
I think both sides are aligned in the desire to reduce the size of government. (Which has been steadily declining relative to the size of the population/economy for something like 4 decades.)
However, the administration is not pushing for right-sizing the workforce. They are proposing deeply unpopular cuts to things Americans actually value, without any debate or discussion of tradeoffs.
> But as it is structured, it is designed to get the best folks to leave, and from unpredictable parts of the org and thus is unlikely to show that result.
I believe that this is largely how this round will turn out. The numbers look very low so far (20k?).
> the administration is not pushing for right-sizing the workforce. They are proposing deeply unpopular cuts to things Americans actually value, without any debate or discussion of tradeoffs.
Just to be clear, I agree with all of this.
As I mentioned above, this is an absolute shit show. If chaos ensues, I think that will be seen as a success by those making the top-level decisions.
Our system of checks and balances is completely broken right now, and the limits are being tested by a group of folks who have no concept of noblesse oblige.
I saw that, and it immediately made me realize that it's sort of not a useful number without context. Are those 20k spread roughly evenly across the government, or are there places where everyone quit? I am sure there are parts of government that will cease to function if the wrong 500 people suddenly quit.
The other set of people who might take the deal are people who are concerned that the new administration will consider them "DEI hires"[1] and fire them later in the year. This is not an unreasonable fear given that the administration has already blamed the DC crash on "DEI" and pledged to root out "DEI" everywhere.
If you expect to be fired ~ in the fall, it is not unreasonable to be interested in the offer to keep getting paid from your federal job while you look for alternate employment.
1 - I am not going to get into who fits this category. The point is which employees might think they fit into this category.
Wait, why can't ATC work remotely? Serious question. They're looking at data on a screen and communicating via radio. Would the latency of any radio-digital relay be too high?
Sure it's feeling like one step closer to Ender's game. But it could be possible in theory?
I'm an Air Traffic Controlling working at a "Center" (ARTCC). It's not the latency - it's that we have backups for the backups. I wish my house had the same level of redundancy my workplace does.
Edit: except for the asbestos. I'm glad my house doesn't have that. (IIRC they were all built in the 1960s.)
A lot of them don't. They work in nondescript windowless buildings controlling all the airspace that isn't right above an airport.
There have also been trials done with "virtual towers" at smaller airports, using a bunch of cameras and with controllers remotely monitoring them and communicating.
And as far as I can tell, representations are still projected on a 2D screen. Air traffic using 3d projections might lower the technical bar for controllers? VR + AI seems inevitable.
Yep. It was a pinky swear to maybe pay for 8 months that might be able to be spent on leave, but none of it was guaranteed.
The employee's agency determines if they spend it on leave, not OPM. Congress will determine if there's even money after March 14th available to pay for 8 months of anything, let alone 8 months of admin leave.
ATCs have the upper hand in this negotiation because they're essential and can't be quickly replaced.
If enough ATCs quit that major airports have to be shut down or reduce flights, the airlines (and stock market) will turn against Trump pretty quickly. My guess is the going salary for ATCs is going to increase substantially once they realize they need to lure back those who quit.
I would love to see all ATCs in DC quit, and for others refuse to work there, so that Trump and Musk feel the consequences for their actions directly. Wouldn't it be great if Air Force One was stranded because of this.
> Wouldn't it be great if Air Force One was stranded because of this.
I was under the impression that AF1 flew in/out of Andrews air force base, which I (possibly naively?) assumed did not use civilian ATC. But yes, that would be great :)
I wonder -- if half of the air traffic controllers took the offer to leave their jobs, do we have a Plan B? The deadline they have been given to decide is Thursday; I have not seen any communication as to whether ATC (and TSA, etc.) will be operational Friday.