After the terrorist attacks of September 11, the nation rushed to federalize the nation's baggage screeners.

Now, we're having to beat back the Bush administration in their rush to privatize the air traffic controllers.

The FAA wants to contract out more air-traffic control jobs in the name of "efficiency." Translated from Bush-speak, this means "eliminate labor protections."

Senate Democrats are outraged that a Republican-led House-Senate negotiating committee stripped language from the final version of the bill passed by both houses this summer that would have prohibited the Federal Aviation Administration from contracting out more air traffic jobs.

President Bush threatened to veto the bill if labor protection provisions were not removed from the final bill.

Apparently, Bush's "war on terrorism," which justifies the infringement of civil liberties and the unprecedented preemptive invasions of oil-rich nations, doesn't justify abandoning the far-right ideological commitment to eliminate worker protections everywhere.

By 2007, the nation’s air traffic control towers and centers that manage some 200,000 takeoffs and landings a day and safely transport 600 million passengers a year would be open to privatization under the terms of a Bush administration–backed bill expected to come to a final vote in early September.

If the bill passes, 69 air traffic control towers—11 of which are located at the nation’s busiest 50 airports, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)—could be turned over immediately to private, for-profit corporations.

After the House and Senate passed their versions of the Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization legislation (H.R. 2115) this summer, both bills contained provisions to guard against privatization of the air traffic control system. But those provisions were dropped in the Republican-dominated conference committee that merged the legislation.

“With virtually no debate or on-the-record votes, Republican leaders of the House and Senate cut a deal on an aviation bill that launches the [Bush] administration’s campaign to privatize air traffic control. It appears to us that the White House and congressional leaders went under the radar screen with this back-room deal,” says Sonny Hall, president of the AFL-CIO’s Transportation Trades Department, which represents 35 transportation unions and those in related industries.

In addition to moving toward privatization of the nation’s air traffic control system, the bill for the first time would allow foreign air carriers to raid U.S. markets and gut anti-terrorism training requirements for flight attendants.

“The nation’s air traffic control system is not for sale,” said Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) when the Senate earlier this summer approved by 56–41 his amendment to the FAA bill to maintain government management over the system. “One thing we learned from 9-11 is that the public does not want private contractors responsible for the safety and security of air travelers. I was shocked when the Bush administration wanted to contract out air traffic control to the lowest bidder.”

The Professional Airways Systems Specialists, which represents the workers who install and maintain the air traffic control equipment, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association and the Transportation Trades Department have launched a campaign to educate the public on the dangers of the privatization initiative and to defeat the legislation when it comes to a vote in September, possibly as early as next week

Bush Proposals for Air Traffic Control

The Bush budget references a plan to privatize the air traffic control system, which has always operated as an inherently governmental function.

• Privatization of the air traffic control system would jeopardize the safety and security of the U.S. system. As the tragic events of Sept. 11th painfully taught us, nothing is more important in air transport than establishing and maintaining the highest degree of security possible in all aspects of the air travel system, including air traffic control.
  
  
• The desire to cut costs and the unbridled belief in "the market," which underlies the drive to privatize most public services, is wholly inconsistent with establishing and maintaining security of the air traffic control system. Moreover, there is abundant evidence that deregulation and privatization of air traffic control often neither save money nor provide security or greater efficiencies in the provision of services.
  
  
• It is nothing short of ironic that the President would push ahead with plans to privatize air traffic control at the same time Congress has decided that national security considerations required federalizing of airport baggage screening.

The controllers say the Bush administration showed its intentions earlier this summer when it threatened to veto a four-year, $60 billion aviation spending bill if it did not include a provision that allows 69 more control towers to be privatized. That could affect more than 900 controller positions.

"They're trying to get away with something here," said Doug Church, spokesman for the controllers' union. "They don't want to let us get out from under this whole agenda to outsource."

Fred Feinstein, a senior fellow at the University of Maryland School of Public Affairs, said the dispute is a skirmish in a war over the administration's efforts to privatize government jobs.

"The relationship between labor and this administration is awful," Feinstein said.

Congressional Democrats say they will not approve an aviation spending bill that turns government-run control towers over to the private sector.

"I will look at every option available to prevent the president from attempting to privatize the air traffic control system," said Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J.

The administration questions why the union is fighting now when it allowed 56 towers to be privatized under FAA Administrator Jane Garvey, who was appointed by President Clinton. The union points out that it sued the government in the mid-1990s, claiming the conversion of government-run control towers is illegal. The case is in federal court in Ohio.

FAA Administrator Marion Blakey says the spending bill merely preserves the status quo because existing law allows federal controllers to be replaced at 71 more towers.

She has said the FAA has no plans to convert any on the list, which has existed since 1999. Moreover, she said, the spending bill before Congress gives 94 percent of all government air traffic control jobs a protection in the law they did not have previously -- guaranteed job security for four years.

Controllers point out their jobs were protected from privatization in 2000 when President Clinton signed an executive order calling air traffic service "an inherently governmental function." Last year, President Bush amended that order by reclassifying the jobs as "commercial, but exempt from competition."

The bill now before Congress includes 69 towers rather than the 71 originally identified. The chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Rep Don Young, R-Alaska, removed the two control towers in his state.

President Bush could not prevail if the privatization issue were put to a specific vote in Congress. In fact it was put to a vote in the Senate two months ago as part of the process of reauthorizing the functions of the aviation-supervising Federal Aviation Administration. With 11 Republicans joining in, the Senate in a 56-41 vote specifically forbade any privatization. In the House, a ban of only marginally less sweeping nature was made part of the legislation it approved.

But when representatives of the two bodies met to iron out differences, the White House went to work to undo what each had already done. Promising a veto for reauthorization legislation that restricted his agenda, Bush insisted that the final version allow for-profit air traffic control to proceed in stages. Rubber-stamp Republicans on the conference committee then folded like cheap suits and the result was legislation that permitted what each house had forbidden.

Lest anyone think that serious legislating on an important public policy issue was occurring, consider the actions of the top Republican member of the House-Senate committee, Representative Don Young of Alaska, who also chairs the House Transportation Committee. Young went along with the White House ploy, but the resulting legislation magically exempted two traffic control facilities from privatization. Not surprisingly those two facilities are in Alaska, Young presumably being willing to inflict for-profit public safety on the rest of us but not so willing to inflict it on his own constituents.

The Republicans did what they could to disguise what had happened. Young's committee statement buried the privatization scheme in a blizzard of information about the overall bill. It was made to seem small, that no major steps could be taken until late 2007, that only traffic control towers already operated privately were exempt -- along with new ones and "certain other" functions. The administration chipped in with the observation that only "rural airports" were involved.

In fact, 2,000 of the system's 15,000 controllers would be affected, along with assorted certification and maintenance employees. The number of towers involved would increase to 71, including Van Nuys, Calif. (the eighth-busiest airport in the country), and 11 of the 50 busiest. The accurate way to summarize the overall traffic control situation is to note that after 2007 the entire system could be privatized.