Flight Service Sigmet

When NAATS lost the contract vote, union President Kate Breen stated that she would “never understand the no vote.” We posted a bit before about what NAATS (and the AFSS Newsgroup) did wrong in this particular fight. But what did Lockheed Martin do right?

Lockheed’s head of AFSS operations, Dan Courain, made a large number of visits to facilities to pitch his case. One item that stuck out to many that we’ve talked to is that under a union shop, there would be no more direct access to higher-ups in LM like him. Everything would have to be done through union channels. By itself this seems to be of little import, but there can be no doubt that LM has responded when controllers have made legitimate complaints. Since taking over, we’ve heard of three facility managers given a well deserved sacking. LM has not put up with bad facility management the way the FAA did.

While certainly not a universal feeling among controllers, our pulse-taking seems to affirm that Lockheed-Martin is a more reasonable employer than the FAA was. The union vote makes this observation self-evident.

Secondly, LM made a shrewd tactical move by agreeing to a quick, immediate vote on the issue, rather than take part in a long drawn-out court battle over union succession. Our view is that LM was likely to lose such a case, so the ‘road taken’ may have been a relative no-brainer. But taking a union vote at this time yielded an advantage; there will never be a larger share of FAA retirees in the Service than there are now. Such individuals are less likely to be disgruntled over their current circumstances. Indeed, by garnering both an FAA retirement and equal compensation for continuing to do the same job, this worker segment has never had it better. They also feel they have the option to leave the job at any time, given their annuity income.

All this is not to say that working for LM in Flight Service is, or will continue to be, all beer and skittles. There are a number of challenges LM has to overcome, with long-term doubts about their commitment to maintaining the legacy facilities (a limited sampling indicates that at least half of controllers believe the legacy stations will start closing during the second five years of the ten year contract). But the doubts were not large enough to counter the image and actions of LM to date.