Flight Service Sigmet

It’s conventional wisdom that corporations are less ‘compassionate’ or ‘caring,’ (choose your favorite adjective) than the government when it comes how they treat people. But in the game of ‘industrial relations’ within the current outsourcing of Flight Service, you might say that the score is Lockheed Martin 2, FAA 0 (although if possible, the FAA would have a rather large negative score).

First of all, as discussed previously, LM originally offered to carry the controllers as contracted federal employees for up to two years so those close to earning their federal retirement could become vested rather than lose everything. But the FAA flatly refused to explore any kind of accommodation.

Within the last couple of weeks a new wrinkle developed within the retirement issue. Some background first: Federal employees are allowed to use annual leave (vacation time) to reach retirement. In other words, if you wanted to retire in a month and had a month of unused vacation time, you could go on vacation and have your retirement effective at the end of that month without having to report back to work.

The LM/FAA agreement calls for all employees to be fired by the government on October 3rd. In order to be hired by Lockheed under the contracted terms of employment, the controller must report to LM for work on the 4th, or whatever their next scheduled workday would be. A few controllers very close to being retirement eligible have enough vacation time on the books to reach their annuity after October 3rd. But they also want to continue working as controllers with LM while 'on vacation' from the FAA. The FAA refused this arrangement saying there would be a ‘conflict of interest’ if an employee of an agency were being paid by both the agency and a contractor of that same agency. Controllers rightly asked what possible conflict would exist since the job they were doing no longer existed within the agency. But the FAA remained unmoved.

Lockheed, to their credit, has unilaterally come to the rescue. They will allow controllers to enter the contract late if by doing so they will become vested in their annuity through use of their unused vacation time.

Controllers are, of course, grateful. But this should not have been a difficulty in the first place. The FAA seems to have a steadfast policy of avoiding any act that might help any controllers reach their retirement. This in itself is not a matter of concern for pilots, but it does highlight the mindset of those who will be monitoring the contract.