August 3, 1981: Murder In The Air

The day the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) began a nationwide strike was the day, writes Steve Early, that

President Ronald Reagan, a onetime Hollywood union leader, gave the strikers 48 hours to return to work. When 11,345 ignored his ultimatum, he fired them all.

With a typically ex-military, conservative membership, PATCO had endorsed Reagan for president

Early was taking stock at the strike's twenty-fifth anniversary—still a few years before the GOP's shiny new tactics for state by state supression of public service unions would get underway.

But as of 2006, Early could write that—

Reagan's mass dismissal of PATCO members -- and their black-listing from further federal employment -- was the biggest, most dramatic act of union-busting in 20th-century America. PATCO's destruction ushered in a decade of lost strikes and lockouts, triggered by management demands for pay and benefit givebacks that continue to this day in a wide range of industries.

Not only was he a former "union boss"; by the end of 1981 Reagan would give this performance:

During his Christmas address to the nation on December 23, 1981, President Reagan condemned the Soviet-backed Polish crackdowns on labor unions, promoting the "basic right of free trade unions and to strike"...

Back to that summer, in the good old US of A: August 5 was the day dismissal notices went to over 5,000 PATCO strikers, as Paul Slansky notes in The Clothes Have No Emperor.

In another characteristic act by the administration—this time, a literal attack on "air," in the sense of, "a substance required for human life"—Slansky quotes a Washington Post headline of
August 5:

WHITE HOUSE SEEKS TO LOOSEN STANDARDS UNDER CLEAN AIR ACT

Today, Reagan's legacy is carried on by his increasingly rabid heirs. Among the current hostage-taking: FAA funding being held up, just to prevent employees from joining unions.

The 1981 PATCO strike was largely over safety issues, as in traffic controllers seeking a reduced work week. Now, part of the blocked FAA funding is for airport safety improvements.

And there's the usual fine fiscal conservatism on display: on the pretext of fighting to cut a total $16.5 million from the budget, the Cons have caused $30 million daily loss in revenues ever since June 22, while the FAA has not been re-authorized to collect ticket and other fees.