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.
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.
yea you cant even apply past 30, only under certain exceptions, like being a military traffic controller. and they dq like the military does too. if they dint really care about the train derailments they wouldnt care about the air traffic. of course reagan made sure there are less ATC, when he fired them all, it just scared people into not becoming one over time.
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.
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.
or some shot to deal with this.
I mean…
Blessed autocorrect.
It’s called impeachment and could happen at any time. Every single Republican is complicit with the Nazi regime.
Every single Republican is complicit with the Nazi regime.
That’s the problem. Half of our representatives are Nazis. How is an impeachment going to go anywhere?
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
Gotta fly the old fashioned way, VFR.
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.
ATC training takes a long time, he assumes it can be done by anyone, it cant.
😞
Are malignant narcissists like him capable of the critical self-reflection required to regret things?
From my experience, no I don’t think so
IIRC the FAA layoffs did not include air traffic controllers, so I don’t think that he was involved with that.
I’m curious what the terms are going to be to get them back. Him just bloating the salaries b/c he’s a moron would be on point for him.
Is it safe to bring back retired people? They retire for a reason, usually.
no its not, its physically, and mentally not possible, since studies have shown how you decline mentally at a certain age.
[Insert GFY meme]
Why would anyone do this when they’re likely to be in another wave of mass firings. Imo yall should strike.
Because, see - uh Elon, he likes to sort of surf on the livelihood of others. It’s like a fun little game for him, where he fires and has to rehire, which forms a pique of the wave so he can feel a little tickle in his belly and go weee. He’s such a scamp.
Actually, no. He’s horrible. Who gave him a mandate again? Oh right.
Who gave him a mandate?
His 300 million dollar campaign donation and 40 billion dollar purchase of twitter, I think.
Bloody hell!
It’s weird to see people all over the place mocking Elmo for this…
Like, he knows no one in their right mind would want to start federal service right now. They treat feds like shit, make wild cuts they know will effect actual essentials. Go on national news and the billion dollar social media websites they own to shit talk fed, even have the head of the DoD call federal workers lazy and a drain on the nation in a public memo for for some reason now comes with a video.
The entire thing isn’t just designed to shrink the federal government, but to then replace it with contractors they “manage” and take a huge chunk of the wages from for the privilege of a job for less than feds got and zero worker protections.
Just lining their own pockets in a legal manner because “no one wants to be a fed”.
Meanwhile 50% of the country cheers him on, and damn near the rest can’t see more than two steps ahead.
Why the fuck haven’t people started learning to plan ahead yet?
Or at least read a damn history book. Fascist aren’t typically original.
Why the fuck haven’t people started learning to plan ahead yet?
What do you mean? Maybe you can clarify?
While I can only guess, I think he/she meant that all the stupid things the government has done so far should not have come as a surprise to anyone. They announced most of it and even the things they kept “quiet” were pretty obvious. So government employees could have searched for alternative jobs beforehand and kind of “brace for impact” and unions could have planned a coordinated response to bullshit firings. Lawsuits could have (and actually have) been prepared so that it would not take months to react to all the stupid stuff that’s happening now.
Or maybe I am completely wrong :)
I planned ahead for layoffs for every fucking job I had, before I retired. I don’t trust management from anywhere. I don’t know why Fed workers would feel any different.
And I also don’t feel any more sorry for them than anyone else. Non workers get laid off all the time and Lemmy doesn’t seem to care that much about them.
Hmmm… maybe the fed workers can “learn to code.”
Well…I think you lost me. The really sudden loss of your job sucks, no matter what. I agree that a lot of people get laid off every day, but I feel sorry for them too. Employee protections in the US are also terrible compared to a lot of other countries. This situation is different, because it is so random, so far reaching and connected with a lot more insecurity. An ailing company may fire people…that is something you can see coming, but what is happening right now is just senseless and not very smart. A lot of things will break and in the end people will die, many people will leave the country and the economy will tank.
read a damn history book
I think they burnt all of theirs.
You mean that people who work in one of the highest-stress jobs in the world might not want the added stress of being potentially shitcanned at any second by this apartheid manchild?
Hyper capitalists love to talk about incentives in a free market… how about you fucking pony up the incentives you thin-lipped small dick bastard
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.
Lol. I hope the ATCs stay parked on their butts. Let a few of the private jets go down because the FAA isn’t there to keep them on their paths. Or to make any effort to anonymize them, since flight plans are legally required to be public info. Let them feel what the rest of us do.
If we’re REAL lucky, maybe some of those private jets will be full of health care executives.
Yo, air traffic controllers still at work: if y’all have ever considered going on strike, now’s the time.
Came here to say this.
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.
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.
They still aren’t back to the same staffing level.
I’d rather get fired than quit. Unemployment benefits!
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…
where ‘heightened scrutiny’ means they fired everyone they don’t like or that doesn’t like them.
What a joke…
