Blakey, Contradicting herself once more.

[surreal1221]

Surprised yet? Angry yet?

Originally Posted by NATCA

In published reports today on the NTSB’s recommendations to the FAA on controller rest, sleep and fatigue issues and the impact of those factors on aviation safety, an FAA spokesperson stated that air traffic controller schedules are negotiated with the controllers' union and that changes to those schedules require approval from employees.

However, this has not been the case since the FAA imposed work rules on controllers unilaterally last September. The FAA sought to impose management rights; one of them was the ability to control schedules and act without input from controllers and without anything resembling a “negotiation.”

FAA Administrator Marion Blakey has confirmed that under the imposed work rules – which she refers to, incorrectly, as a “contract” – FAA managers and supervisors indeed have the power to set schedules. Blakey’s exact words can be found in a March 9, 2007 letter to House Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.), which was written in an attempt to try and convince Congress not to send the FAA back to the contract table with NATCA to finish the collective bargaining process that the FAA walked away from in April 2006.

Says Administrator Blakey: “Over 70 percent of our facility managers and about half of the managerial workforce are eligible to retire this year. In what no doubt would be an ironic turn of events, we believe rolling back the contract will prompt a wave of retirements in the managerial and supervisory ranks. Undoing the contract would trigger many of their departures because it would take away their ability to set schedules, control costs, and respond to customer needs.”

Doug Church is the contact individual regarding this release, one can have his information from the other releases for today.