AMENDING TITLE 49, UNITED STATES CODE
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Mr. GENE GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 5449, which would move current and future contract disputes between the FAA and the air traffic controllers to the Federal Services Impasse Panel.
Current law has an extremely unusual disadvantage for our Nation's air traffic controllers: if their union negotiators cannot reach a contract agreement with FAA, then the FAA can impose a contract unless Congress says otherwise within 60 days.
The FAA declared an impasse in the negotiations and has stated that they will be imposing their terms unilaterally within a matter of days in the face of majority opposition in Congress.
This is an extreme burden that few other American workers, if any, must meet in their contract negotiations. Current FAA contract law grants too much power to the FAA management and makes a mockery of the collective bargaining process.
H.R. 5449 is a good compromise, because we as Congress are not taking sides and picking the air traffic controllers contract offer or pick the FAA's contract offer.
The bill is good policy because Congress is not the best place to negotiate the details of employment contracts. Instead, this legislation would place the decision in a specialized board that has plenty of experience mediating federal workers' contract disputes.
The Federal Services Impasse Panel is fair--they resolve numerous disputes in favor of different sides, sometimes going with the agencies' positions and sometimes with federal employees.
The air traffic controllers in the Houston Center and the Houston TRACON and throughout Texas deserve the same fair shake in arbitration that other federal workers receive.
Much of the opposition to this legislation and to air traffic controllers in general comes from groups that voice knee-jerk opposition to any and all federal spending. They fail to offer any answers to the simple fact that air traffic controllers have a hard, complicated job with extremely high stakes.
I doubt that many of the opponents to this bill have ever been in an air traffic control tower, or a control center or a TRACON when a large bank of flights comes into a major hub airport.
We want our skies to be safe, and you don't get safety by cutting corners and nickel and dimeing the workforce.
Our air traffic control system is about to experience a wave of retirements. If we want to recruit quality employees to keep us and our children flying safely into the future, we should approve H.R. 5449.
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