Reagan’s Union-Busting in PATCO Strike Reverberates Today
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Jim Morin was a former Air Force air traffic controller when he joined the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in 1977 and was assigned to one of the busiest airports in the nation, New York’s LaGuardia, where he became secretary-treasurer of the PATCO local.
But even as air traffic was growing and the air traffic control system was working at near capacity, the FAA was cutting staffing numbers and forcing controllers to work longer hours, especially in the spring and summer when thunderstorms would back planes up across the country.
We’d get hammered. So many planes and so few places to put them. It just wore you down, especially if you worked swing shift [3-11 p.m.]. The fatigue factor was huge and a lot of suggestions we made just fell on deaf ears.
In 1981, Morin says controllers knew they were risking their jobs when 12,000 went on strike after negotiations broke down. But they stuck together in solidarity. President Ronald Reagan followed through on his threat and fired the controllers and busted PATCO. That’s still reverberating today, says Morin.
The major ramification for organized labor today is that employers are no longer hesitant to go ahead and hire or threaten to hire replacement workers and workers and unions are very hesitant to use it [strike] now. As far as conservatives are concerned, they point to the strike and the firings as a shining moment in labor history.
Morin was part of a forum at the AFL-CIO today in Washington, D.C., where Georgetown University associate history professor Joseph McCartin, author of the definitive book on the PATCO strike, Collision Course: Ronald Reagan, the Air Traffic Controllers, and the Strike That Changed America, explored the strike’s impact on the labor movement and its connection to the erosion of collective bargaining as a path for workers to get to and stay in the middle class. Read the rest of this entry »
Special AFL-CIO Event Will Explore 30-Year Impact of PATCO Strike
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Thirty years ago, Ronald Reagan fired the nation’s air traffic controllers after they walked out on strike, signaling an escalation in the war on workers and the middle class that is still being waged three decades later.
On Wednesday, Dec. 14, at the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C., Georgetown University associate history professor Joseph McCartin will discuss his new book on the PATCO strike, Collision Course: Ronald Reagan, the Air Traffic Controllers, and the Strike That Changed America.
McCartin will be joined by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and Kenneth Moffett, who headed up the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service during the strike, as well as several former PATCO members.
The event is free and gets under way at 2:30 p.m. EST. Copies of Collision Course will be available for sale and a book signing will follow the event.
Click here to RSVP.
Labor Lab Examines PATCO Strike’s Impact on Collective Bargaining, Then and Now
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Thirty years ago, Ronald Reagan fired the nation’s air traffic controllers after they walked out on strike, signaling an escalation in the war on workers and the middle class that is still being waged three decades later.
On Tuesday, Oct. 18, Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor is hosting a “labor lab” on “The PATCO Legacy and the future of Collective Bargaining.”
The event features Georgetown history professor Joe McCartin, author of the book “Collision Course: Ronald Reagan, the Air Traffic Controllers, and the Strike That Changed America.” The panel includes former air traffic controllers and Ken Moffett, the former director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service.
The labor lab begins at 5:30 p.m. EDT in the ICC Auditorium on the Georgetown campus in Washington, D.C. Click here for more information and here for a recent interview on the strike and its impact McCartin gave NPR’s Diane Rehm.
Reagan Called for an End to ‘Crazy’ Tax Loopholes that Let Millionaires Pay Less than Bus Drivers
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This is a crosspost by Pat Garofalo at Think Progress.
When President Obama released his plan for “the Buffett rule,” which involves closing tax loopholes and ensuring that millionaires pay their fair share in taxes, he explained that “middle-class families shouldn’t be paying higher taxes than millionaires and billionaires.” “Warren Buffett’s secretary shouldn’t pay a higher tax rate than Warren Buffett,” he said.
Ever since, Republicans have been attacking Obama for inciting “class warfare.” “It looks like the President wants to move down the class warfare path,” said House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI). “I don’t think I would describe class warfare as leadership,” agreed Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH).
Health Care Tax Would Hit Chevy Plans, Not Just Cadillac
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Here’s a look at some of the latest news across the country on health care reform:
Following his address to the National Press Club on the nation’s jobs and economic crisis, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and other union leaders met with President Obama at the White House to discus how the final health care reform legislation should be shaped, especially the tax on working families’ health benefits that is part of the Senate-passed bill.
The New York Times reports that during the hourlong meeting, Obama repeated his support for some form a health care benefits tax, but “used Monday’s session to search for a sort of compromise.” In a statement following the meeting, Trumka said it was “frank and productive meeting between friends on moving forward on health care reform.”
• Allan Sloan, senior editor at Fortune magazine (hardly a pro-union, left-leaning, tax-the-rich journal), writes in a Washington Post op-ed today that despite claims that the tax on “Cadillac” health care plans would finance health care reform, more than 80 percent of the money to finance the plan would come from individuals paying higher income, Social Security and Medicare taxes—and the biggest portion of that money would come from people who make less than $200,000. Sloan adds:
The impact on people in the $1 million-plus range—most of whom probably really are rich—is relatively trivial.
• Several studies show the tax on workers’ health benefits impacts regular folks with basic “Chevy” plans and likely won’t result in employers returning the tax to workers in the form of higher wages. Studies also show that no one really knows if the benefits tax would reduce overall health care costs.
• While pundits have been pontificating about the mostly cons of the tax on workers’ health care, everyday folks have more down-to-earth descriptions. Check out the comments’ section following Art Levine’s recent Truthout post about the possible political fallout if the tax lives. Real anger there.
• Who really spawned this awful idea to tax working families on their health benefits? PaulVA at Daily Kos reveals it was the gleam in the eye of the Heritage Foundation in 1973 and was given birth by Ronald Reagan when he proposed it in 1985. However Reagan, showing his political savvy,
dropped this tax like a hot potato once he found out it was so unpopular.
