Summary
Elon Musk called on retired air traffic controllers to return to work, citing a shortage amid heightened scrutiny of the FAA under Trump’s second term.
With DOT Secretary Sean Duffy’s support, Musk’s DOGE attempts to “upgrade” aviation systems despite recent FAA job cuts.
The AP reports fired employees included radar and navigational aid maintenance personnel, though Duffy insisted no “critical safety personnel” were terminated.
Musk’s appeal comes amid increased public concern over recent aviation incidents, though experts consider the uptick an anomaly.
Well if it isn’t the consequences of his own actions.
Fucked around ✅
Found out 👈
Not really, tbh. He’s pretty clearly just doing as much damage as he possibly can. This whole “Oooh whoopsie, we did a bad, does anyone want their job back?” shit is pure show to give himself some plausible deniability to keep the guillotines at bay.
If you look at what’s happening through the lens of his goal being malice, and ignore the “ooooops!” pony show, what you see is a man who’s hamstrung an entire nation with literally zero consequences.
I wonder if he regrets this one though. If it becomes dangerous to fly he’d have to travel on the ground like a peasant
He’d sooner take the oligarch route and privatize the FAA, fill it with his own loyalists, then give his flights priority wherever he goes, including whatever private aviation business (e.g. FedEx clone) he wants to push.
Are malignant narcissists like him capable of the critical self-reflection required to regret things?
From my experience, no I don’t think so
Gotta fly the old fashioned way, VFR.
There’s also the “fire everyone, then hire them back at a reduced salary while leaning on the fact that they care about preventing deaths enough to take the deal” aspect.
In less than a month too.
Feels like we need no confidence/snap elections or some shot to deal with this.
But really we needed better protections from dictators and better under-represented vote counting long ago and now we have to fix shit the hard way.
It’s called impeachment and could happen at any time. Every single Republican is complicit with the Nazi regime.
Honestly, this one’s not even completely his own fault. Standard bureaucratic ossification has been fucking up ATC staffing for years now. The pay is low, the qualifications are steep, and the responsibility and stress is insane. Why would someone do that? And so, people don’t. And, on top of them, management from both the business and political sides simply doesn’t give a fuck about safety or morale.
The levels of traffic were just recently increased in that DC airspace where the plane hit the helicopter, and at the time, a bunch of qualified people were trying to raise the alarm that some bad shit was going to happen if they stuffed more aircraft into an already overcrowded area. No one in a position to make any of the decisions cared, and they did it anyway. That all happened before Trump and Elmo came into the picture.
Of course, it is true that their own actions have produced some additional consequences now. They’ve fired a bunch more people and demotivated all the existing or prospective ones pretty much as much as it is possible to do. And, as much as the existing systems are aging and in need of some modernization, it’s absolutely guaranteed that whatever Musk does to “improve” them will make them even worse. All I’m saying is that he didn’t entirely create the bad situation he is now about to amplify tenfold.
100%. There was a shortage of traffic controllers before the firings even began, this only exacerbated a bad situation.
Someone at all familiar with the status of ATC staffing who isn’t a complete idiot would clearly not have exacerbated this situation.
I’m a developer - I’d even classify myself as pretty far to the “move fast and break things” end of the spectrum. But I’m a senior developer because I ask questions and understand things and write tests to confirm that understanding and prove a new system correct before fucking breaking them. Once that’s done I’ve totally got a sledgehammer in hand and am wildly swinging it around to rebuild it cleaner but, critically, we do this in a development environment.
This fucker is hot fixing production without a fucking clue how anything works. He’s in a little fucking bubble where the only opinions allowed in are “Elon is a genius” and he’s drinking the fucking Kool-aid. I’ve seen executives like that and the only correct response is to jump fucking ship.
IIRC the FAA layoffs did not include air traffic controllers, so I don’t think that he was involved with that.
“There is a shortage”
ah damn i love that language. reminds me of the boss that abused my mother back when she was still in employment. “there is a shortage, you need to come over on your day off, otherwise we can’t handle the workload”. how about employing more people? no? maybe because you can’t find another fool who will do the work with these bad working conditions?
There has been a shortage for a decade, and the post is literally Musk trying to hire early retirees to fill staffing shortages.
There’s no such thing as a labor shortage, especially if it’s been long enough to train more ATCs. If the pay is high enough, then people will come out of the woodwork.
The work is difficult, and the expectations and stress are high. They 100% need to pay better, but the pool of qualified candidates is already fairly small.
Yet it’s larger than the number of people required.
Sounds like they need to increase pay and reduce the number of hours worked while still getting a salary and benfits to entice more people to the position and make the stress more bearable for those they can get to fill the position. It’s not a matter of how many people are qualified it’s a matter of how many people want to make the tradeoffs to work there and be upskilled to meet the requirements. If your deal is not enticing enough, you need to restructure how the position works in order to entice more people for the position.
It’s also difficult to qualify for. As I recall the civilian route to become an ATC is at least six months of full time training (also - usually you need to have already had some work experience/college background) and the test has at least a 50% failure rate.
You need a college degree only to be qualified, but you are only put into groups 2 or 4. Veterans and people who do to college for atc or aviation safety go to groups 1 or 3. That’s just to then do the minimum 6months of atc training. They also just started direct hiring from colleges with approved programs.
- Claim a federal agency is inefficient
- Fire employees and defund agency
- Agency performs worse than before
- Point finger at the agency showing how it is incompetent
- Move to privatize agency
- $$$$$$$
That’s been the Republican M.O. for like 40 years.
At least 50
Well, there was a brief period after the civil rights era where they still held the pro-union stance from before the conservative shift, you can still find posters in the 70s/80s, but for the most part yes you’re right.
Not just republican, the whole neoliberal politic.
US law mandates retirement at 56 for Air Traffic Controllers due to the high stress and fast-paced multi-tasking nature of the job
It’s considered one of the most mentally challenging jobs there are.
I’ll just leave that scene from Breakind Bad here. If i was in the US i would not enter any flights for the foreseeable future, unless it is the flight to permanently leave.
Interesting.
The EU & UK would consider that age discrimination and illegal. You can’t be forced to retire at a given age.
Strange that America uses it - especially given the age you allow your presidents to be.
Age discrimination is illegal in the US for almost every job, there are a handful of exceptions.
It would be in America as well, except ATC is classified as a secure role like the military or police so they get away with stuff like this.
We should have this same law for politicians.
How about you just increase the pay and benefits you’re offering? if you love the efficiencies of the free market so much why don’t you fucking act like it
The free market dictates that in a shortage, the cost of the goods or services must rise to meet the equilibrium of supply and demand. Anything else is surely incredibly inefficient.
Fucking beg, fascist bitch.
No no. Pay is what he needs to do.
¿Por que no los dos?
Maybe fill in the blanks with racist assholes? I want to watch that work itself out.
“No OnE wAnTs To WoRk AnYmOrE” - guy firing a bunch of people without cause.
Surprise Surprise Surprise (Gomer Pyle voice)
Just what the fuck did you think was gonna happen Elonia? Fucking idiot…
Leopard, meet face…
🤦♀️ 🤷♂️ 🖕
This is intentional. They want to replace everything with their own shitty for-profit systems.
Which will be a disaster of epic proportion.
Yo, air traffic controllers still at work: if y’all have ever considered going on strike, now’s the time.
Easier to quit; last time ATCs went on strike Reagan just fired them all
Would they still be able to replace the fired workers as quickly as they did in 1980?
What is quick? From what I remember reading, they didn’t really get back to normal until the early 90s. I could be wrong, I saw this a while ago.
They still aren’t back to the same staffing level.
The linked article says they were back up and running at 75% in days. They had started training replacements in preparation for the strike, then had scabs and people breaking the picket line due to the threat of firing, then brought in military ATCs to fill in blanks.
I’d rather get fired than quit. Unemployment benefits!
Came here to say this.
Yeah I’m sure they’re just RARING to work for the most publicly toxic boss (that isn’t even a boss) in the world…
This is so easy to fix. Just ask the remaining ATCs to put in 30 more hours per week. If there is a safety law which needs to be amended to make this happen, just amend it. Remove all the rules and safeguards. We should do it like the Tesla factories.
Look. More air accidents will happen. People should be ready to sacrifice themselves. It’s that easy.
So easy to fix.
PS: /s for some of you who may need it…
We also need to brace ourselves for hardship. I mean Elon won’t be facing monetary hardships but you will. So brace for that.
How, exactly, are we to brace ourselves for any of this?
Learn about growing, preparing, and preserving food. Learn how to repair things. Make connections with like-minded people in your IRL community.
I could do with learning which seaweeds taste nice. All that grow here on the shoreline are safe to consume though some might be as useful as eating cardboard or taste disgusting. Beyond that, catching crabs is something I have managed a few times. Mussels I am not sure if they are safe as they are filter feeders and the water isn’t that clean here.
Grow things? Are you suggesting we all go back to an agratiat culture where we all make our own food?
Because in that case be prepared to go back to the 1600’s and anarchy. There won’t be enough food for everyone and without artificial fertilizer and industrial farming, the world can sustain about 2 billion people tops. Good luck with that.
Just don’t board a plane. Should be fine, they probably won’t crash into your house. Plus fewer people on planes reduces air travel which can only be a good thing.
Put your head down between your legs, cover with hands, pray that you land successfully
Elmo will be facing hardship before he dies.
All his companies rely either on bubbles (hello Tesla!) or pure government assistance (hello SpaceX!) and the guy is a few marbles short of a dozen. He is literally a scammer who got extremely lucky. He is also insufferable to literally everyone around him, even his own family. It won’t last.
Seriously you couldn’t pay me to fly these days.
Pay more wages, the way of a free market is supply and demand
There’s no such thing as a labor shortage.
Time to renegotiate salary!
time to sing l’international!!
Yes, the ask is treating ATCs as a collective; they should do some collective bargaining.
- Flying Lizards - Money REACTION *
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7qsikAVx-k
5:54
"I want money
That’s what I want.
That’s what I want."
FLYING LIZARDS Money EXTENDED VERSION
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_ld0WWvQ4o
5:35
The shortage is his own damn fault. I wouldn’t want to work any government job right now.
Fucking clown show
