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Trump threatens to ‘dock’ already unpaid air traffic controllers who call out sick: ‘I am NOT HAPPY WITH YOU’
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2025
446 points (98.9% liked)
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not an air traffic controller but I assume it's a pretty high demand job. would be a shame if all controllers started a general strike and froze air traffic for weeks just to prove a point.
not like this administration could entice anyone outside the US to work in this shithole anyway.
what's the worst they'll do? chain you to the desk and make you work at gunpoi-- yeah... they'd probably do that...
I'm not american but I think "the worse they can do" is the issue here, they introduced laws allowing atc to be imprisoned if they strike. Their options really are limited to claiming to be unwell
could just quit.
"sorry, I've decided to a change in careers is beneficial to my health."
Good idea, I read somewhere that's happening already with normal resignations being 1-2/day being closer to 20/day
that's impressive tbh. with numbers like that though it would take almost two years for a collapse to happen.
Mid air collisions will happen much sooner than that.
Yeah, he probably would. Luckily He doesn't have enough ICE agents to do that. And as ICE is his only personal army, that's the force he'd have to use.
In other words, he's all talk, he's out of cards to play here.
They went on strike in the Reagan era and then got fired and replaced.
"I know, we'll replace them with AI!"
✈️💥
may have worked then, but I doubt it will work this time.
From what i've heard the numbers never actually came back. All of them got fired but only some of them got replaced. I suspect most current ATC's know this. Nobody is gonna want to work that thankless job if the fed is firing everybody because they wont resolve the poor working conditions every few decades.
And Reagan made it illegal for them to strike ever again.
They didn't just get fired.
They were black listed from ALL federal government positions. That includes being an Air Traffic Controller. Now Bill Clinton eventually lifted the ban but that took 12 years and even then - very very few were hired back.