Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois is calling on the Transportation Department to broaden its $10,000 shutdown bonus to every air traffic controller and FAA technician who performed work without receiving on-time pay.
The department previously announced that 776 personnel with perfect attendance during the 44-day shutdown would receive the payments, following a directive to recognize those who maintained operations during that period. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said last month he was proud of the selected employees, calling their efforts “the highest levels of public service.”
In a letter first obtained by CBS News, Duckworth described the current criteria as excluding “96 percent” of the workforce, saying the approach was “unfair, divisive and disrespectful” to thousands who reported for duty under what she characterized as highly difficult circumstances.
25.12.03 – Aviation Subcommittee Ranking Member Duckworth Letter to Secretary Duffy – Air Traffic Controlle… by CBSNews.com
Union officials have raised similar concerns. The National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) said that 311 of its members qualified for the bonus, reiterating that many more worked during the shutdown. The Professional Aviation Safety Specialists union has said 423 technicians will receive awards.
“Although we agree that the work performed by these aviation safety professionals during the shutdown deserves recognition, praise, and our collective gratitude, we are concerned that thousands of air traffic controllers who consistently reported for duty during the shutdown, ensuring the safe transport of passengers and cargo across the nation, while working without pay and uncertain of when they would receive compensation, were excluded from this recognition,” NATCA told CBS.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has defended the policy, saying in a press release that the department had to determine a clear cutoff while acknowledging employees who “never missed a beat.”
All controllers received full pay once the shutdown ended, although controllers who missed any work for any reason were not eligible for the bonus.
Duckworth and several House Democrats said the plan risks creating incentives for staff to work while sick, and have urged the department to issue the bonus to the full workforce.
The Transportation Department has said payments will be made no later than Dec. 9.
Of course, you idiots on the left want full pay for controllers that didn’t show up. Tell me again why was the government closed? Gee you don’t know that your stupidity kept it closed for the entire time. So, FU Tammy Duckworth (less) I know that you didn’t vote to open it.
Why am I not surprised. Give a little and they want much more.
The bonus was for Perfect Attendance - I guess that was only 4% of the staff. And what to the spend and tax democrats want? A participation trophy for all that showed up even for just a little bit. Sure why not? Its not their money.
I am a little divided on this topic. For those people who had vacation scheduled for weeks or months prior to the shutdown, took those days exactly as they had proactively scheduled, but otherwise showed up for every single day of work as scheduled, those folks should be paid the bonus. For example, I have a family member who had a day off scheduled to get her aeromedical exam (a requirement for controllers), she took her day off and got that exam done, but that excluded her from receiving the bonus.
However, someone who took time off that was unscheduled should be excluded. We all know (and some of us guilty of it ourselves) of taking that odd sick day on a Friday or Monday just because we wanted to. We know it happens. But, if any of our various companies that we worked for were to offer a bonus out-of-the-blue and we were excluded from it, it would be no one’s fault but our own for failing to qualify.
The payment of this bonus is a bad in general. If it was going to be done at all, it should have been offered before the shutdown began to discourage calling off. Handing it out after the fact like this is politics.
Duckworth is just kissing up to the union trying to buy more votes for her with our money.
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Is that really your takeaway on this…the shutdown and then this bonus are all performative politics.
And a hardy Merry Christmas to you!
It’s a BONUS for perfect attendance…people get a BONUS for doing an extraordinary job…those that reported EVERY day, got this ATTENDANCE BONUS. What can’t the Senator understand about that? Oh yeah, as a socialist Democrat from the state of Illinois, she wouldn’t understand why anyone should receive recognition or additional compensation for anything.
ATC and airport security should be private in any case and funded by users of the airports. The government is useful to ensure standards and expertise are ensured, but otherwise the private sector always does a better job, and as we’ve seen in the government shutdowns, its better they be independent from political upheavals…
Good idea. Let’s give the contract to Boeing.
Responsible employers no longer offer rewards for perfect attendance. Aside from the recognition that no human is born with a halo around their head that exempts them from the circumstances that warrant taking an unplanned day off, the reward incentivizes irresponsible behavior such as driving while incapacitated and infecting others at work.
The reward for perfect attendance as well as the the urging of the same reward for working only one day during the shutdown are just two examples of the output from those leaders: short-sighted, knee-jerk, bereft of consideration of purpose, effect and affect.
Contrary to the assertions in the comments that working during the shutdown was just another day in the office and subject to the criteria for the routine rewards and penalties, working while not knowing when you will be paid for the work—while such work preempts you from taking up employment elsewhere to make ends meet while jeopardizing retirement savings or credit ratings—is a substantial risk that should be rewarded. When you can’t assure someone of a pay date, their continued employment with you is entirely their prerogative and unless they have made out a new working contract with you, an absence is not even subject to normal leave allowances; it certainly is not yours to penalize. It doesn’t take a Cray supercomputer to deduce that the reward amount should be proportional to the risk undertaken. Since the true risk of each person is not easily assessable and is none of the gov’t business in this case anyway, the simplest operand which will give a fair and expeditious result is the number of days worked during the shutdown. That operand is available.
The monetary reward for attending may be icing on the cake for some, for others it may not be enough to make up for penalties incurred for late mortgage or credit card payments, withdrawals from IRAs, etc. Even late pay may be too late to prevent a credit rating downgrade, repossession of a vehicle or initiation of foreclosure or eviction proceedings. Expecting businesses that suffer second- or third-order effects to show consideration to these employees is very presumptuous and an indication of the normalization of dysfunction in D.C. As usual, the effect on spouses, children and other dependents is not acknowledged.
On the other hand there is nothing to deter the next shutdown. It’s problematic when it is considered normal for the FAA’s Administrator to threaten employees with something absurd to the effect of “you better show up for work without pay today or you won’t have the privilege of doing so tomorrow.” Aren’t labor laws being violated when you coerce people to work without a definite pay date?