Scott Walker, Chris Christie, Peggy Noonan, and the Misuses of History

Almost 34 years later, the PATCO story lives on as fodder for politicians.  In Collision Course, I wrote about Gov. Scott Walker's references to Reagan's handling of the PATCO strike as an inspiration for his attack on public sector collective bargaining in Wisconsin, which led to the passage of Act 10 in 2011. 
     Among Republican presidential hopefuls, Reagan's breaking of the PATCO strike continues to loom large.  New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has also made allusions to the PATCO story.  In an appearance at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on September 27, 2011, Christie Christie told his "favorite Reagan story":

For me, that story happened thirty years ago, in August 1981. The air traffic controllers, in violation of their contracts, went on strike. President Reagan ordered them back to work, making clear that those who refused would be fired. In the end, thousands refused, and thousands were fired.

    I cite this incident not as a parable of labor relations but as a parable of principle. Ronald Reagan was a man who said what he meant and meant what he said. Those who thought he was bluffing were sadly mistaken. Reagan’s demand was not an empty political play; it was leadership, pure and simple....

   I recall this pivotal moment for another reason as well. Most Americans at the time and since no doubt viewed Reagan’s firm handling of the PATCO strike as a domestic matter, a confrontation between the president and a public sector union. But this misses a critical point. To quote a phrase from another American moment, the whole world was watching.

The speech in which Christie told this story was one that was touted as giving Christie's foreign policy views.  Tellingly, Christie's foreign policy speech never mentioned Iraq, Iran, or Afghanistan, and said precious little about the state of the world.  Instead it dwelt on the PATCO strike as a moment when America sent a message of strength to the world in the Reagan era.  The breaking of the strike was, in Christie's view, apparently foreign policy triumph above all else. 
     Recently, Scott Walker doubled down on this view.  In an appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Feb. 21, 2015, Walker argued that the Reagan's handling of the PATCO strike was one of the "most powerful foreign policy decisions" of the last half century:

One of the most powerful foreign policy decisions I think that was made in our lifetime was one that Ronald Reagan made early in his presidency when he fired the air traffic controllers which would seem to be a solely domestic policy but what it did was it showed our allies around the world that we were serious and more importantly ... to our adversaries that we were serious.   Years later, documents released in the Soviet Union showed that that exactly was the case.  The Soviet Union started treating him more seriously once he did something like that.  Ideas have to have consequences.

In fact, no such Soviet era documents referred to by Walker actually exist, as an investigation by Politifact found.

In her Wall Street Journal column on Feb. 28, 2015 former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan took issue with aspects of Walker's story, including his allusion to Soviet documents that have never been found.  Even in doing so, however, she herself mischaracterized PATCO's story.  Twice in her column she claimed controllers sought a 100 percent increase in pay in 1981.  That is far from true.
 
PATCO's story continues to be told in twisted ways by most public figures that invoke it.  While the Reaganites themselves were hopeful that the PATCO story would have an impact on the Soviets--as I say in my book and as Walker and Christie suggest--there is no documentary evidence that it had the supposedly intended effect.  It is notable that those who trumpet the strike as a foreign policy triumph have much less experience in foreign policy than they do in making war against public sector unions and collective bargaining.  I suspect that in their misty image of Reagan, neither Walker nor Christie can wrap their minds around the fact that Reagan was less opposed to unions in the public sector than they have been.  Unlike Walker, Reagan never concluded that public sector collective bargaining itself was misguided.  He simply believed that an illegal strike by federal workers could not be tolerated.  

The Passing of Robert Poli

Robert E. Poli, who led the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) during their strike in 1981 died at his home in Idaho on September 15, 2014 at the age of 78.
   I am sorry that I never had an opportunity to interview Bob Poli.  As I explained in an earlier blog, he never followed up on letters I wrote or messages that I tried to send him through intermediaries.  But I was not the only person who found him reluctant to relive the memories of the 1981 strike.  Most of those in the union who were close to him during his presidency and at the time of the strike also found that he pulled back from them in the years since they walked out together and into history.  In an obituary in the New York Times today, Bob's son Rob reflected on his father's life and the legacy the strike left for his family.   As William Yardley, the obituary writer, explained:

    Rob Poli said that he sometimes challenged his father on the wisdom of the strike, but that his father would not yield, citing the vote of the union members.

“That wasn’t his intention when he ran for president, that ‘I’m going to become president and I’m going to take this union out on strike,’ ” Rob Poli said. “I think the difference was, he wasn’t afraid of being the person out there and doing it.”

“I’m very proud of him,” he added. “He was a good guy just trying to do what he thought was right and kind of got boxed into a corner. He used to always say, ‘Oh, Robbie, if that had worked out, it would have been the greatest thing in the world.’ ”

The full obituary can be viewed here.  
 

Guest Blog: THE 60’S AND PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONISM

Bob Butterworth, was a PATCO leader in the San Francisco Bay Area when the strike occurred on August 3, 1981.  He was fired for defying President Ronald Reagan's ultimatum.  He later regained employment with the FAA as an Air Traffic Controller after President Bill Clinton lifted the ban on the rehiring of PATCO strikers, and he became an activist in the union that succeeded PATCO at the FAA, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association.  Butterworth, known as "Pres," to many of his PATCO-era friends and colleagues, was one of the most important subjects I interviewed for Collision Course.  In a guest blog written for this Labor Day he gives his perspective on PATCO as a product of the turbulent 1960.

The Air traffic controllers strike in 1981 by members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) has become the battle cry for Unionism both private and public.  The reaction to this strike by Ronald Reagan with the firing of 11,000 controllers has become a rallying point for union organizing.  So where did it all start?

Prior to 1968 most Air traffic Controllers were former military controllers that had become all too familiar with the military management style and were not surprised to find a continuation of that dictatorship manner of supervision present when they were hired by the FAA.  It was dealt with in a “What choice do we have” kind of mentality with an added fear of the consequences of speaking out against such demeaning and counter-productive supervision.  “After all, we work for the government, we can’t organize!”  This feeling was prevalent among many government employees well beyond Air Traffic Controllers, at that time.

The PATCO Strike and the Current Controversy about the NLRB

The PATCO strike's influence still resonates.  I was a guest on the Diane Rehm Show today on National Public Radio.  The subject was the recent controversy concerning Republican efforts to block President Obama's appointments to the National Labor Relations Board (which was resolved two days ago by a compromise in the Senate).  I shared the studio with Lynn Rhinehart of the AFL-CIO and James Sherk of the Heritage Foundation. 
      Although the PATCO strike took place outside of NLRB jurisdiction

 (federal workers are outside of its purview) and despite the fact that it occurred over 30 years ago, among the things we talked about today was the way that strike helped lead to the polarization that now afflicts the U.S. labor relations.  It is getting harder to recall a time when workers' rights to collectively bargain enjoyed a good measure of bipartisan support.  Today the partisan divide on that issue seems wider than it's ever been.  You can listen to the show at the link here. 

LABOR's Forum on COLLISION COURSE

I'm grateful to LABOR: STUDIES IN WORKING-CLASS HISTORY OF THE AMERICAS for organizing a Bookmark forum on Collision Course.  In that forum, I was honored to have my book discussed by four smart and knowledgeable people: Jack Metzgar, whose own book on the 1959 steel strike is one of the best ruminations ever written about a strike; Liesl Orenic, a fellow laborer in the vineyards of aviation labor history, from whose work I have learned so much; Rosemary Feurer, whose book Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 1900-1950 demonstrated a keen understanding of internal labor dynamics of the sort that I wrote about; and Dave Sapadin, a former air traffic controller who lived through some of the events in the book.  LABOR Online, the blog of the Labor and Working Class History Association has posted the contributions to this forum this week along with an introduction by Rosemary.  You can find it here.

F. Lee Bailey Back in the News

The attorney F. Lee Bailey, who played a crucial role in forming and building the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) during the years 1968-1970, was back in the news this week.  Bailey, who has relocated to Maine, sought admission to the bar there (he had been disbarred in Massachusetts and Florida in the early 2000s).  Bailey passed the Maine bar exam last year (I last spoke with him when he was studying for that exam), but this week it became public that the State of Maine Board of Bar Examiners ruled on his application and voted 5-4 to reject it.  The majority ruled that "Mr. Bailey has not met his burden of demonstrating by clear and convincing evidence that he possesses the requisite good character and fitness necessary for admission to the Maine Bar."  For more on this story, check this in the Lewiston Auburn Sun-Journal.

The FAA Explains Air Traffic Control (1963)

This public relations video produced in 1963 by the Federal Aviation Agency (the predecessor of the Federal Aviation Administration) gives a sense of how air traffic control worked in the years when air traffic controllers first began to organize.  The visuals here say a lot about FAA culture, the homogeneous composition of the controller workforce, and the the way technology worked in those days.  While the video might seem hokey in some ways when looked at from today's perspective, it evinces a level of respect for the vital role that federal workers play in the nation's life that seems all to absent from today's public discourse.

Mike Rock Tells the Story of PATCO's Origins

This week will mark the 31st anniversary of the 1981 air traffic controllers' strike.  With that in mind, I thought it would be a good time to post an interesting bit of historical memorabilia.   This is a video of PATCO co-founder Mike Rock taken on January 10, 1979, as he told the story of the origins of the air traffic controllers' union, recounting the working conditions controllers faced in the 1960s and the long struggle that led them to decide to form their own organization.  The film was made at the AFL-CIO's training center in Silver Spring, Maryland, as Rock spoke to PATCO activists who were beginning the union's preparations for the 1981 contract expiration.  The quality of the video isn't the greatest.  It was preserved and copied several times by Mike's friend, and PATCO legend Jack Maher (who passes briefly across the screen in the videos opening moment).  But Jack gave it to me with the hope that it would help explain why he and Mike and their colleagues began organizing in the first place.  This is the opening excerpt of a several hours worth of history that Rock shared with his PATCO colleagues in 1979.  I cut off this segment just before Rock recounted PATCO's founding.  I'll be posting more of the Rock lectures once I edit them.  Enjoy:

Calling Bob Poli

Occasionally I get a letter from a former PATCO member who inquires about Bob Poli, who led the union during the 1981 strike.  I was not able to interview Bob Poli for my book.  The letters I sent to the addresses I had for him were not answered and those who offered to contact him on my behalf were unable to put us together.  He has tended to guard his privacy in recent years: he did not come to the two PATCO reunions I attended.   (Poli's son, Robert P. Poli, did drop in to meet me after the book was published, however, and I signed a copy for him.)  I heard recently from Larry Sawatzki, of Kansas City, who told me that he wanted to reach out to Poli.  His letter and its postscript is representative of many that I've gotten from strikers.  I'll reprint his letter below with his permission. 

Dear Professor McCartin,

My name is Larry Sawatzki.  I was a member of PATCO Local 332, MCI TRACON, Kansas City, MO.  I was hired by the FAA in 1973 after four years in the Navy.  I was an active member of the union, serving as facility rep in Kansas City, as well as terminal voting representative for the central region at the last two PATCO conventions.  I was a friend of Jack Maher, Mike Rock, and Gary Eads, as well as many others you mentioned in your book.  I was with Bob Poli in the lobby of the Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel on election night 1980.  When the national news networks projected Reagan as the winner we, along with numerous colleagues, proceeded to celebrate.

Fathers and Sons

I've now talked to a fair number of controllers whose fathers or sons were also controllers.  Their stories never fail to interest me for inevitably they are stories of passion--passion in their relationships (sometimes marked by conflict), in their attachment to the work they did as controllers, and in their feelings about what happened to them and their families.  (Pictured to the left is a PATCO striker and son, 1981.)  This week I've heard from another strike veteran, Pat Garrett, who wrote to tell me his story about being fired and about his dad, who was also a controller, and who, as Pat explains, embodied the passion to which I refer.  I post Pat's letter now in the spirit of Father's Day. 

Dear Mr. McCartin,

I just read Collision Course.  Thank you, for a well written and researched  book.  It provided new details of the union and the strike and brought back a flood of memories, emotions and some responses. I am a fired PATCO member from Santa Barbara, CA and the son of an air traffic controller of 25 years. He retired just before the strike.

Beginning at age 25 I worked as a controller for almost three years with prior experience in retail and a BA degree in geography.  My Dad encouraged me to accept the job. I hesitated because of his negative stories as a controller.  He emphasized that I'd really like the work but may have difficulty

Collision Course wins Richard A. Lester Award

On May 17, it was announced that Collision Course won the Richard A. Lester Award for Outstanding Book in Industrial Relations and Labor Economics published in 2011.  The award is presented by the faculty of the Princeton University Industrial Relations Section to "the book making the most original and important contribution toward understanding the problems of industrial relations, labor market policies, and the evolution of labor markets."  A full explanation of the award can be found here.
   The best thing about the award is that it might induce economists and industrial relations scholars to read the book.  It seems to me that we historians don't tend to read enough work in those fields, and in turn economists (the IRS faculty excepted!) don't tend to read enough history.  So my thanks to the Princeton IRS faculty for promoting this cross-over. 

May Day, the Fate of Strikes, and the Relevance of Collision Course

The Sunday, April 29, edition of MSNBC's talk show, "Up with Chris Hayes," aired a fascinating discussion on the fate of the strike over the past 30 years and the future of workers' collective action.  The discussion hosted by Chris Hayes included long-time trade union intellectual and activist, Bill Fletcher Jr., president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, Congressmen Jerry Nadler, and Marina Sitrin, of the Occupy Wall Street Legal Working Group.  The context for the discussion was the call for a May Day general strike by Occupy Wall Street organizers, but the discussion quickly turned to a broad consideration of American workers' loss of the power to strike effectively.  In that discussion Bill Fletcher Jr. strongly recommended Collision Course for clarifying how we got to where we are today.   Check out that discussion here.

A Challenge from Dean Fields

I received an e-mail over the weekend from Dean Fields, who worked the Terminal Radar Control at LaGuardia in New York City in 1968 when Mike Rock, who then also worked there, began organizing PATCO's first meetings.  Dean wondered if I or someone else would write a follow-up book, focusing specifically on the experiences of rank-and-file controllers, whose stories he does not want to pass away unrecorded.  Here's what he said: 

The 42nd Anniversary of the "Easter Rebellion"

Forty-two years ago today, on March 25, 1970, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) launched a nation-wide sickout to protest an effort by the Federal Aviation Administration to forcibly transfer PATCO's leaders at the Baton Rouge, Louisiana, airport.  The move was an effort by the FAA to weaken PATCO in the south.  This job action came hard on the heels of the 1970 postal workers' wildcat strike, and caused great controversy.  More than 3,000 controllers took part in the job action, which was illegal.  Most were suspended and docked pay, and some lost their jobs temporarily (until a secret back room deal between labor and the Nixon administration brought about their rehiring).  Those who took part in the sickout/strike were known as "horses" and proudly wore this pin on the anniversary of their job action in the years thereafter (photo courtesy of Ron Taylor).   

      The "Easter Rebellion," as many controllers called it given that it spilled into that holiday, in many ways completed PATCO's transformation into a union.  In some ways it also set the stage for PATCO's later miscalculation, fostering the belief that Reagan's administration too would cut a backroom deal rather than fire everyone who walked out on August 3, 1981.  Today is a day to remember how a poorly designed federal labor relations system courted trouble in one of the nation's most important agencies, increasing the likelihood of a disastrous national strike the legacy of which still lingers. 

One Former Controller's Story

This week I heard from Steve Pohowsky, a former member of PATCO local 262 at Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport in Pennsylvania who lost his job for striking in 1981.  He is pictured at left with fellow striker Mike Duvall.  Steve's story is particularly interesting because he had been on the job for less than a year when he struck.  As he told me, he "spent more time with the other controllers on the picket line than I did in the tower."
   Here is what he wrote to me about his story:

Thank you so much for writing an absolutely wonderful book on the Air Traffic Controller strike of 1981.  I had always hoped that someone would write a fair book about this watershed event in labor history.  I was one of the controllers fired by the President.  Reading your book brought back many of the emotions I felt during that time period.   I’ll admit my eyes went misty reading the last two chapters because I lived through all you wrote.  I related to all the former controllers you mentioned.  This was part of my past I tried to bury.  Thank you for reminding me where some of my current independence and strong will came from.

        I joined the FAA at age 25 in September 1980 after 4 years as a air controller in the Air Force.  I finished 2nd in my class at the FAA Academy and was placed at the

When the Sit-Down Heroes Stood With PATCO

Only a handful of strikes in the twentieth century helped change the course of American labor history.  For reasons I explain in my book, I think the air traffic controllers' strike of 1981 was one of those.  Most historians would agree that the 1936-37 sit-down strike by autoworkers in Flint, Michigan, was another.  On December 30, 1936, autoworkers stopped the assembly line at General Motors' Fisher #1 body plant in Flint, and instead of leaving the plant to picket outside they occupied it.  They stayed in the plant for 44 days, repelling an effort by the Flint police to evict them on January 11, 1937, holding fast until GM signed an agreement recognizing their union on February 11, 1937.  Their victory propelled the success of the United Auto Workers union and the Congress of Industrial Organizations, and helped facilitate the organization of millions of industrial workers in the years thereafter.

     In August 1981, survivors of the Flint sit-down strike realized that they might be witnessing another turning point in labor history and they rallied to the defense of the striking air traffic controllers of PATCO.  This week I heard from James Spalding, who was president of PATCO Local 375 at Bishop International Airport in Flint, and Choirboy in charge of strike organizing in the mid-Michigan cluster that also included Lansing, Saginaw, and Jackson.  Jim recounted his memories of the day that the sit-down strike heroes picketed alongside PATCO members outside Bishop Airport, an event captured in the picture above sent to me by Jim.  Here's a portion of what Jim said:

How Air Traffic Control Worked on the Eve of the 1981 Strike

Thanks to a post by Pat Vaughan, I've learned of set of videos that do a wonderful job of explaining something that was challenging to get across through mere prose in my book: how air traffic control worked on the eve of the 1981 strike.   These videos are from a story for the Sunday Magazine show on WKYC broadcast less than a year before the strike.  Reporter Tom Haley journeyed to the Cleveland Air Route Traffic Control Center in Oberlin, Ohio, where he was given a tour by controller Dan Smith.  Al Roker, then early in his broadcasting career, does the lead-in.  The video comes in two parts.  Enjoy. 

Part I:

And Part II:

From PATCO's story to 9/11

This week I heard from former controller Mahlon (Mal) Fuller.  He joined the FAA in 1968 and worked at Philadelphia, where he participated in the 1970 sickout and helped to lead the local before moving to Pittsburgh and up into management years before the strike.  Mal wrote to say that he thought the book accurately reflected the history he lived through, and that it captured the personalities of the people he knew, like Mike Rock and Jack Maher.  He also sent me a link to his review of the book on Amazon.  

    I was stunned to learn from Mal that he was working on the morning of September 11, 2001, as the watch supervisor of the Pittsburgh tower and radar room.  His experience that day was harrowing.  He first learned that something was wrong when a controller walked into the Pittsburgh radar room to say that the news on the television in the break room was reporting that a plane had struck the World Trade Center.  When he went to the break room to investigate, he saw the second plane hit.  He knew then that this was no accident.  Over the next three hours he and his team played a role of one of the most remarkable events in aviation history, clearing the air of all non-military air traffic.  But there was one plane that his team could not get to respond as it flew directly over Pittsburgh airport toward Washington, DC: the hijacked United Airlines Flight 93.  You can listen to Mal talk about his experiences that day and about the heroic passengers of Flight 93 who stormed the cockpit and prevented terrorists from reaching their intended target in a radio interview that aired last fall by clicking here.

    Mal writes, “As I look back over my career I wonder if I was unknowingly being trained for 9/11 through my association with many of the PATCO men and women whom I knew and worked with and with some of the managers/supervisors who were PATCO members/sympathizers in the old days.”  It is a compelling thought.  And I’m sure there are other threads that connect PATCO’s story to other controllers and supervisors who stepped into the breach on that horrible day.  By the way, Mal has an inspirational talk that he gives on his 9/11 story.  You can find out more about that from the Lancaster County (PA) Speakers Bureau here.
    And there is a fascinating postscript to Mal's story that might interest the historians among you: it turns out that he is named after his grandfather, J. Mahlon Barnes, a cigar maker by trade and a trade unionist who went on to become active in the Socialist Party of America in the early twentieth century.  In fact, Mal's grandfather was an associate of Eugene V. Debs and he served for many years as the party's executive secretary.   Stories like Mal's make you realize just how connected everything is if you look hard enough for the connections.  

Remembering Allegheny Flight 853

When I was at the Newberry Library in Chicago recently to talk about Collision Course, I had the good fortune of meeting David Sapadin, a controller who was fired from Cleveland Center in 1981 for participating in the strike, but who managed to get rehired using the appeals process of the Merit Systems Protection Board.  (As I point out in the book, only a very small select group of strikers were able to do this.)
   David is now retired from air traffic control.  But he continues to study its history.   He reminded me of an event that I did not write about in my book, but one that should not be forgotten.  It was the mid-air collision between Allegheny Airlines Flight 853 (a DC-9) and a single engine Piper PA-28 (tail number N7374J) over Indiana on September 9, 1969, resulting in 83 deaths.  (The debris field of this accident is pictured above.)  As a subsequent investigation showed, that event occurred in large part because the smaller plane failed to show up on controllers' radar.  This inadequate equipment was one of the chief concerns of the then recently-formed Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO).   David Sapadin studied that accident while a student at Ohio State in 1970 prior to his hiring at the FAA.  You can read the interesting paper he wrote back then discussing this event.  It is called "The Nightmare -- The MidAir" and you can find it here.   My great thanks to David.  If you'd like to get in touch with him, he can be reached at: dmsapadin@yahoo.com

Some Unwanted Attention

Today the Washington Post reported an odd story regarding John Hinckley Jr., who is still incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital for having attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan (and seriously wounding others including James Brady) outside the Washington Hilton on March 30, 1981. 
    A court hearing was held today on whether Hinckley ought to remain incarcerated.  At the hearing, Secret Service agent Jason Clickner testified about what transpired when he followed Hinckley on October 16, on one of the periodic excursions Hinckley is granted from the hospital.  The agent reported that on this outing Hinckley entered a Barnes & Noble bookstore, went directly to the History section, and became fixated on a certain book he saw on the shelf there, the blue front cover of which featured a photo of President Reagan in its upper right corner.  Hinckley's fixation on the book gave the agent "goosebumps."  Read this bizarre story in full at this link.  And for CNN's report on the affair click here.