Reagan fired a bunch, and then (naturally) hired a bunch to replace them. ATC work, generally speaking, for twenty years (that's when their pension vests), so twenty years after the strike there was a "cliff", with a larger than usual number of ATC retirements. As I understand it, that was anticipated at the turn of the millennium, and hiring + training ramped up to compensate, without much disruption. The next "cliff", twenty years after that (ie, that millennium tranche retiring), coincided with 1) a less than forward-looking administration, and 2) COVID. We still haven't dug our way out from under the second wave of retirements.
You're absolutely right that solutions should have been taken, but it's also true that we're picking up the pieces of a decision taken forty years ago.
What's impressive is that if you look at the issues PATCO struck over, it was basically identical to the problems ATC faces today. The problem being that everything has only gotten a lot worse for ATC controllers.
The union pretty loudly and early on pointed out major problems with that job and the response of ignoring them for 4 decades is what's driven us to the current situation.
A union that isn't allowed to legally strike when needed isn't a useful union though. The state that ATC has been in for the decades after that suggests to me that they were correct to strike.
Multiple economic write ups have concluded that Reagan’s “stick it to the upstart guy” cost us tax payers way more than it would if they’d just acceded and maybe even thrown in a gracious bonus to say thanks.
Larger sociology say the intangible cost to labor balance laws actually were much more.
Reagan’s trickle down (great euphemism for “piss on”) movement was the beginning of the demise of the GOP IMO. Disclaimed: I voted both times for him and many GOP followers.
and now the country of freedom is free to deal with ATC shortages that leave people managing two runaways and ground traffic by themselves in a a major airport
ah, truly a decision with no consequences
tl;dr just because it's a legally allowed decision, doesn't mean it's a right decision
There’s a pretty big difference between “economic leverage” when it means your stores might be shut down for a couple of weeks vs. all of the people moving, shipping, etc. in an entire country.
A strike being inconvenient? Workers leveraging how crucial they are? The stoppage of work having massive impacts across the country? Huh, maybe the powers that be should listen to the workers when they ask nicely for better conditions instead.
Isn't the "inconvenience" the entire point of a strike? A strike where nobody was affected in any way wouldn't be a very effective one, after all, so the larger of an inconvenience the more likely for the other side to relent to the unions demands.
The iPhone 17 Pro launched 8 months ago with 50% more RAM and about double the inference performance of the previous iPhone Pro (also 10x prompt processing speed).
But it's 100% politics. The question is who gets government grant money. It's determined by the priorities of the people in charge, plus some luck if there are lots of good applications. Every decision made is a political decision, and every result is a politically-motivated result.
To me, it seems that I clearly meant that I don't want a political decision and not that this is not related to political decision.
For example, people that have been cut from their jobs, or damages done while maintenance was suspended, etc... There were consequences. And this work was mostly done by a quickly assembled 3rd party company or individual.
My question is, even if it was not ai, a d even if it was intentional or not, is there anything that can be done to repair and avoid this from happening again?
It seems to me, quite an absurd, that no one can/will be held accountable for so many blunt mistakes.
Oh I see, you mean undoing what's been done. Lawsuits seem to be effective sometimes, even if they are slower and the results are incomplete. The reversal of tariffs, for example. A judge just ruled that the DoD policy that removed a bunch of reporters out of the press pool was illegal. So for these grants, I guess the applicants who were denied could use this evidence to say that they were denied a fair selection process, maybe claw back some of the money that was going to other people, and demand a second review. Actually getting consequences for the people who did this would be a separate set of lawsuits I think.
Yes. That's what I mean.
Constitution means nothing if it needs to be fixed retroactively. Specially if there is the possibility a strategy of acting faster than the law.
For example, some countries may open an impeachment process against the acting chair if they are found to not be respecting the constitution.
In some of those places. It is not a matter if it was done on purpose or not, it is a matter of not being planned to avoid the problem.
It worked much better 10/20 years ago than now, but technically, the system is there. It does not work well today because there is no real opposition to the government to trigger the mechanism, although eventually they flag it in order to keep some level power over the government.
Unfortunately, it has been practice of the current government to create and give away positions as ministers for the challenging parties to settle things down, and as expected, it became a exchange coin.
I don't want to dox myself, hence I am not naming the place.
It's possible for the Senate to impeach Trump rapidly, but they have decided not to. That means almost every other action is retroactive. Here's another one that's moving ahead, but slowly. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/03/all-of-doges-wor...
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