There appears to be no end in sight to the government shutdown, but one specific group of federal employees may be able to steer Congress toward a resolution: air traffic controllers. With the shutdown firmly in place, airports across the U.S. are dealing with major delays and safety concerns due to controller staffing shortages — the same issue that eventually led to the last shutdown being resolved in 2019. Air traffic controllers could once again prove crucial in bringing Democrats and the GOP to a deal, but it will be easier said than done.
These employees may carry significant weight in reopening the government. Air traffic controllers “make up less than half of 1% of the federal workforce, but when it comes to a government shutdown, they wield disproportionate power,” said New York magazine. This is largely because of their critical role in the nation’s transportation grid. During the 2019 shutdown, “all it took was ten controllers skipping work to cause delays that snarled more than 600 flights.”
The circumstances of this current shutdown “highlight a huge gap between the official and the actual power controllers wield,” said New York. Controllers are “forbidden under the law from engaging in a labor action” due to the essential nature of their work, but “in reality, each individual controller can call in sick whenever they want.” This means that as a “practical matter, controllers have the government by the short hairs.” It’s a “bargaining chip. The union is in a good position to negotiate,” one controller told New York.
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It “doesn’t take long before the system slows down. The safety margin is always protected. But what happens is we meter the amount of aircraft that the system can hold,” said Dennis Tajer, an American Airlines pilot and a spokesman for the union that represents its 16,000 pilots, to NPR. Even without a coordinated effort from controllers, it could be that “enough people will individually make the decision that they don’t feel like going to work” and then the shutdown “will not last a tremendous amount of time,” one controller said to the outlet.
This means you may be able to look to the controllers to see when the shutdown nears its end. During the “last government shutdown in 2018-2019, an increase in absenteeism by air traffic controllers was a key factor in President Donald Trump’s decision” to end it, said Forbes. The average controller already “works six 10-hour days a week with just four days off every month,” said Nick Daniels, the president of the 19,000-member National Air Traffic Controllers Association, to Forbes.
What next?
Congress does not appear close to resolving the shutdown anytime soon. The Senate once again failed to “advance either of the dueling plans to end the week-old government shutdown,” said The New York Times. Delays and safety worries are likely to continue at airports across the country for the duration of the shutdown. Officials have reiterated that American airspace remains safe and that the Federal Aviation Administration will reduce the number of flights if necessary to maintain that safety.
