1. The Agency, or rather the Air Traffic Organization (AAO) under the CEO Russ Chew is about to implement a major reorganization.  This has not been announced to the bargaining unit nor negotiated or briefed to NATCA so the following info COMPLETELY UNOFFICIAL.  What I know as of this time is that this would be the most significant shuffling in recent history. Many of us will fall under new regions or “service areas” and the implementation, at least at the director level and above, is set for tomorrow February 9^th with full implementation targeted for early June.  Our regional structures will apparently be done away with and replaced by 8 Service Areas separated geographically and by terminal or enroute functions.  The centers and terminals will be separated along center boundaries instead of state boundaries. For who goes where, the best guess is that , ZOB and ZID will be lumped with ZNY, ZDC, ZTL, ZMA and ZJX, and the Service Center will be the Southern Service Area in Atlanta.  All terminals underlying the ZOB and ZID center airspace will be in the Eastern Service Area in New York.  ZMP and ZAU will be lumped with ZKC, ZME, ZFW and ZHU, and the Service Center will be the South West Service Area in Fort Worth.  The terminals underlying these centers will be in the Central Service Area in Chicago.  The AFSS’s will be divided by the Mississippi, and the Service Centers will be located in the former New England, Central and Alaskan Service Areas; it is believed Anchorage will continue as a stand alone Service Center for terminal, en route and AFSS.  Nancy Shelton (Central Service Area - Chicago), Rick Ducharme (Eastern Service Area - New York) and John Clancy (Western Service Area - Las Angeles) have been assigned as the Terminal Area Directors; It is unknown who the center area directors are, but it looks like Herman Lyons (sorry ZKC) will be the Southwest Area Director, Rick Day will be the Southern Area Director, and the former Northwest Mountain Division will be the third Service Center and the Western Service Area, but we don't know who that director will be.  Not only will your managers be reporting to different folks (and say bye-bye to the hub system for terminals?) but this presents a lot of challenges for our Union, not the least of which is in the LMR arena.  I mean just who do you negotiate with at the former Regional level now?  More as it becomes available.

2. The White House released its Department of Transportation budget for next year.  It is quite the hit parade and the first jaw dropping “hit” is a 16% cut in spending on air traffic control facilities and equipment while simultaneously touting its futuristic modernization plan to drastically add system capacity.  Huh?  As if to make this unwise plan a bit more surreal or own Secretary of Transportation has announced the goal of tripling system capacity in the next 15 to 20 years.  I’m not sure what Norm has in mind, but with the staffing and retirement crises in full motion and new equipment programs being now slashed I guess this must be part of his new career as a magician.  Things that make you go Hmmm.

3. The White House is continuing to move forward with the DOL on its plan to slash overtime pay eligibility which congress was unsuccessful (at least for now) in removing from the giant omnibus bill the other week.  As I mentioned before, our CBA will protect the ATC bargaining unit in its current form and hopefully won’t be implemented prior to elections for our other bargaining units.  But folks, when our current contract extension expires, we had better hope there is a change of attitude in the elected leadership in Washington or we are going to be in a major world of hurt.

Speaking of contracts, The FAA has unilaterally declared an impasse in negotiations for the 11 other NATCA bargaining units without contracts (after the Agency rarely even showed up at any scheduled meetings to negotiate) and is now attempting to utilize a clause in the original FAA reclass authorization to send it all to Congress to work out.  The clause they are trying to invoke was only meant for the original restructuring years ago (and when the FAA tried to stall then, the Government, in the form of Al Gore, had to step in and order them to negotiate in good faith) and we believe the use of this particular clause at this time is not only bad faith but also illegal.  The Federal Services impasse panel has recently declined to intervene essentially saying it didn’t fall under their jurisdiction to do so (the Federal Impasse Panel doesn’t have jurisdiction in a federal agency impasse?) and now NATCA has filed suit against the FISP and the FLRA to hopefully get them to do their jobs.

So as you can see it’s been another few weeks of bliss with the new under funded and labor hostile FAA.  Our best hope now is the NATCA PAC.  If you are a PAC member thanks!  Please try and convince any coworkers who are not to join up.  After all it’s only their jobs that depend on it.