Air traffic controllers were initially offered buyouts and said they were considering leaving the government

One day before an outdoor deadly collision at Reagan National Airport outside Washington, DC, Federal Aviation Administration employees received a resignation offer with eight months’ salary.

The union for air traffic controllers has recommended that its members are not accepting Tuesday’s offer, because the FAA had not decided which positions would be included in the resignation plan. An official of the personnel management office, the US government’s human resources branch, said on Friday that the controllers were not eligible for the resignation plan or subject to the freezing of hiring in a large part of the rest of the federal government.

The crash on Wednesday, which killed the 67 people aboard an American Airlines plane and an army helicopter renewed the emphasis on the real implications of President Donald Trump’s push to reduce federal bureaucracy.

There is no evidence that the effort of the White House to reduce the government played a role in the collision, with shortages of air traffic controllers for a long time before Trump. But those who have worked in air security say that those who try to considerably shake federal workforce must remember that lives are at stake.

“It concerns me that there are people who do not want to reform or restructure the institutions, they want to destroy the institutions,” said James Hall, head of the National Transportation Safety Board under President Bill Clinton, Democrat. “The American people take advantage of the safest aviation system in the world. I have no doubt that there should be changes in the government, but someone should remember the old adage to watch before jumping. »»

On Thursday, as the accident investigation was on track, FAA employees were one of the federal workers who received an email saying to leaving and finding a more useful job.

“The way to greater American prosperity is to encourage people to go from lower productivity jobs in the public sector to higher productivity jobs in the private sector,” said OPM note.

An OPM official, who resigned from the offers, said that air traffic controllers are exempt from a job freeze that Trump announced when taking care of January 20 and that they are not eligible for a takeover even if they have received the offer. The manager spoke under the cover of anonymity to discuss the operations of the internal government.

It was not clear if the controllers themselves were informed by OPM if they are exempt. Once the initial offer, the National Air Traffic Cuellers Association has recommended in an email to its members of the union not to submit a request for resignation until more information is available. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the union email.

Natca president Nick Daniels said the officials had not explained to the union details of how his employees are affected by the retirement program.

“Natca has not received a briefing on how or if the delayed resignation program will be implemented in the FAA,” Daniels said in a statement provided on the AP on Friday.

“It is not yet clear how this program will affect the air security workers represented by our union,” he added. “However, we are concerned about the potential effect of public security and the efficiency and capacity of the air traffic control system if the FAA had to lose experienced aeronautical security personnel during a shortage of Universally recognized air traffic controller staff. “

Although the new administration insists that its reduction in costs will exempt public security workers and will ensure the security of citizens, its rhetoric and its approach have been more radical than surgical.

Tesla and CEO of SpaceX, Elon Musk, the Trump technology magnate has exploited to direct the effort, said that “bureaucracy kills America” ​​and has repeatedly called for massive reductions and between the federal market. Trump and his supporters have made personal loyalty to the president an absolute priority in hiring new workers or keeping those existing.

During the campaign, Musk demanded the resignation of the FAA administrator, Michael Whitaker, who clashed with Musk to regulate Spacex and resigned the day before Trump took office. This left the FAA Leaderless until Trump, at a press conference on Thursday after the accident, appointed an actor chief of the agency.

Trump blamed the hiring of diversity after the accident – despite no evidence on the qualifications of anyone involved in the collision – and alleged that former presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama lowered the standards to meet racial or other quotas. He decreed a policy of diversity of the FAA which existed during his first administration.

Although the Trump administration talks about the need to lose federal workers, the government is desperate to hire air controllers for almost a decade. The FAA had trouble following the growing number of commercial flights, even if there had been no fatal air accident since 2009. Last year, Biden pushed funding to hire 2,000 additional controllers and A announced the hiring of 1,800 controllers in September.

A FAA report obtained by PA said that airport control staff at airport on Wednesday “was not normal”, a person doing the work normally assigned to two people at the time of the collision. A person familiar with the question noted that the positions are regularly combined when the controllers must move away from the console for breaks, during shift changes or when air traffic is slow. This person spoke under the cover of anonymity to discuss internal procedures.

Don Kettl, professor emeritus of public policy at the University of Maryland, warned that it is likely to become even more difficult to recruit air traffic controllers who really need it now.

“The fact that there is so much uncertainty in such a short time and the fact that the president personally seems to have blamed them,” said KetTL, “is necessarily more difficult to hire more controllers.”

KetTTL has warned that there are many critical, demanding and highly qualified government government jobs that are already difficult to fill – from food security inspectors to hospital veterans’ surgeons – and this can become even more difficult now .

“Government fiber is woven throughout our lives,” said Kettl. “If you retrograde the capacity, you retrograde what you get.”

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Beaumont reported to monks, Iowa; Gomez Licon reported to Fort Lauderdale, Florida; And Riccardi has reported to Denver.