> Considering that the head of the FAA and TSA were forced to resign

For context, the heads of the FAA and TSA are supposed to serve 5-year terms. The FAA Admin (Michael Whitaker) who was forced out started serving in Oct 2023. The TSA Admin (David Pekoske) was first appointed in 2017, and then nominated for another 5-year term in 2022.

As far as I'm aware, this is the first time those positions have ever been told to resign by a new administration.

I've been avoiding the typical outrageous statements from the current POTUS for many years, but his comments at his press conference today, about how DEI hiring could be responsible for this accident, are just unbelievable. And all of a sudden it seems to have made him to decide that the FAA needs a director today.

There are reports that qualified applicants were turned away by US Gov due to DEI. But go on...

With all due respect, Hacker News is not the place for making blanket assertions with no references. Please post a citation if you have one. Otherwise please don't waste readers' time with unfounded rumors.

Poster may be referring to the complaints about the devaluation of the standardized CTI process https://ojs.library.okstate.edu/osu/index.php/CARI/article/d...

There was also a lawsuit against the last Sec of Transportation which I believe was related but not too sure.

"People are saying"

What reports, specifically?

The same ones Trump hears, probably.

FAA ATC has been underfunded and understaffed for years. That has nothing to do with DEI.

Citation needed. "DEI did it" is just the new conservative buzzword for everything.

You should be clear what you mean by saying this is DEI: you (and POTUS) are saying "they hired too many female and/or black air traffic controllers, passing over superior white male applicants, thus leading to this accident".

Air traffic controllers go through objective standards-based training and testing. Are you proposing that the FAA is applying lower standards based on gender or skin color?

There is and has been a shortage of applicants for the past few years. Many controllers are over-worked with excess hours and little to no vacation time. Shifts are often under-staffed.

Update: I'll retract part of this. I'll stand by the part about conservative buzzwords and the dogwhistle of "you hired too many women and blacks".

But it appears the FAA did have some kind of "biographical questionnaire" that was not objective and standards based. I'm 100% against that kind of system or anything else that seems like a quota. Making an effort to recruit from all communities and making a welcoming environment is good. Lowering standards is not.

The other thing I'll stand behind is the ATC pipeline has not been fully-staffed for a very long time, pre-dating COVID and the even earlier biographical questionnaire. It appears both of those things made it worse (independently).

Yeah same here. Somehow these latest today by T have gone overboard and struck a chord. What an absolute bozo he is.

Reagan fired the ATCs when they tried to assert their rights - can't be good if they think they may be the next in line for DOGEing.

> they tried to assert their rights

They went on strike for 32 hour work week and extra pay and benefits.

Maybe good, maybe bad, but not for "rights" (also, technically illegal, in case that matters).

Considering how high stress the job is they definitely should have a 32 hour work week. Strange hours with lots of complicated bits.

And a union is about more than just workers rights it's about ensuring worker safety. Workers must be able to advocate for safety within their jobs and to ensure the best end result for a customer.

> And a union is about more than just workers rights it's about ensuring worker safety

Sure, I was just responding to the claim they "asserting their rights."

Whereas it was a comp+workload disagreement.

> when they tried to assert their rights

That's an interesting way of phrasing going on an illegal strike which they agreed not to do as part of their employment contract.

The fact that a strike can be illegal is, in and of itself, an erosion of worker rights.

unpopular opinion - but public workers should not be able to go on strike, and in fact shouldn't even be allowed to unionize. it's antithetical to democracy. they should simply run for office and change things, not hold taxpayers' services hostage.

unions make sense for private organizations because private organizations are effectively authoritarian entities, not democracies. there is no mechanism in which you could actually "vote" anyone out or establish a leadership position by virtue of popular support, and most importantly there's no constituency to air grievances to

Yeah, imagine if somebody at say Google made a union as opposed to just buying up 51% of the stock to vote somebody out.

Everybody makes in-groups to advocate their positions. idk why when it comes to workers people are all like "but they shouldn't". Let me know when you're against the US Chamber of Congress ...

I don't think that's an unpopular opinion really. Unions are supposed to be an adversary of management who they negotiate with, and depending on who wins the election they are an ally. There's a conflict of interest. So naturally the group that supports the person that wins the election will have a favorable contract and be able to grow their union as that's beneficial to the political party and the union.

At the very least states should implement laws and statutes that define limits and rules such as union compensation must be paid with the current years revenues and not with bonds that are paid for by future generations, etc.

That’s a good point against unionization for government employees.

But anti-union is against the right to assemble, and any law requiring an individual to work goes against some very basic freedoms (self-determination, slavery?)

Let’s not make stripping away of freedoms a common thing that employers, government or private, can do. Rights are rights.

> simply run for office

That "simply" is doing an absurd amount of heavy lifting.

The people in federal workers unions aren't in elected positions, no country or government anywhere has voters weigh in on every clerk, office manager, etc.... They're just jobs, no one votes for them beyond in some cases voting for the head of their agencies but more often by voting for the people that will select the agency heads.

There's a very obvious error in your reasoning: the relationship between public worker and the government is a relationship between an employer and an employee, not between a government and the governed. Why shouldn't such workers be extended the same rights as others?

there is no mechanism in which you could actually "vote" anyone out

Here again, you are implying that public workers somehow do have that ability, to vote "out" their employer. How do you imagine that works, in practice? Do you think it would be better for public workers to form a PAC and run public campaigns for or against a specific candidate? That would be a much more problematic option, as something like that would make public workers political entities themselves and pit them against the government they're supposed to keep running.

I don’t agree with your opinion but I think you make a great point. They are definitely very different situations which at least warrant some differences in policy.

It's a compromise to ensure the functioning of the country.

PATCO members were offered more than double % raises of any other government employee with a small reduction in work hours.

They overplayed their (illegal) hand and it bit them. No sympathy.

Everyone else was offered 2.5%?

Honestly I'm expecting an executive order banning left wings at this rate.