iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Allegedly Joel @allegedlyjoel.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

Sorry, I was born in 86, im not arguing, but asking for clarification- they based their thought process on Reagan lying to them and thats THEIR fault?

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Andy Berner @andybrnr.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

I mean, I wasn’t alive then, either - I’m more or less echoing Prof. Vaughan’s read, I think?

It is not clear in retrospect why PATCO—a traditionally Democratic union—would en- dorse a conservative Republican presidential candidate. But it made sense to them at the
time. They were disillusioned with Carter. Reagan was labor, himself a former president of the Screen Actors Guild who led actors in a strike against film studios. As governor of California, he had walked a careful line, not laying down a clear pattern of actions either for or against labor unions. Indeed, he had avoided a punitive policy and demonstrated restraint with strikers, 26 He was actively courting unions in his campaign, and they were endorsing him. The clincher was a letter he wrote PATCO on October 20, 1980, prom-
ising support in exchange for endorsement: "In an area so clearly associated with public safety, the Carter administration has failed to act responsibly. You can rest assured that
if I am elected president, I will take whatever

steps are necessary to provide our air traffic controllers with the most modern equip- ment available and to adjust staff levels and workdays so that they are commensurate with achieving a maximum degree of public safety.... I pledge to you that our government will work very closely with you to bring about a spirit of cooperation between the President
and the air traffic controllers."IZ7 Believing that Reagan was in their corner, PATCO's demands for the new FAA contract were far beyond anything ever asked for by federal union employees and what the law allowed federal workers to negotiate. 178 They were even beyond what some PATCO members believed they deserved in the high-inflation period of the 1980s. Of the union's ninety- six demands, the top three were for facilities fully staffed with controllers, the replacement of outdated equipment, and the right to ne- gotiate rights in collective bargaining equal to or greater than those of postal employees, including the right to strike under some situations. But some of the other demands stymied a settlement and publicly branded the union as greedy: a $10,000 salary increase for every controller, semiannual cost-of-living
raises one and a half times the inflation rate, a

four-day workweek of thirty-two hours (con- trollers elsewhere in the world were working between twenty-nine and thirty-eight hours a week, while US controllers in some places were running six- to seven-day workweeks plus overtime). They also demanded a secure re- tirement plan: because of insufficient staffing,
controllers' retirement was not guaranteed.tº As negotiations stalled, PATCO threatened to strike on June 22, 1981, at which point Reagan offered the union what was possibly the most generous set of concessions made to a federal public employee union in govern- ment history, 18º FAA personnel were stunned by the capitulation. PATCO members were divided. The offer was much lower than what they asked for. Combined with the insults they had already suffered from the FAA and the Carter administration, the offer was one more. Confident of Reagan's support in spite of his unwillingness to make further conces- sions, the union set a second strike date for August 3, 1981. On that day, nearly 85 per- cent of PATCO's membership—about 12,300 controllers—walked out.181 Four hours into the strike, President Reagan took a strong stand against the illegal strike, ordering the strikers
back to work in forty-eight hours or be fired.

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Andy Berner @andybrnr.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

Btw, it’s a great book - if you have any interest in aviation or the safe functioning of complex systems, it’s a fascinating read. Some places it feels longer than it needs to be and in other places a little too brief, but worth the effort.

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