Stand with N90 Air Traffic Controllers Against FAA

Hello all, and thanks for considering supporting the EWR sector air traffic controllers at N90 in our fight to keep our jobs and our homes in NY. Our families thank you.

For years, the FAA has threatened to move the New York TRACON and its workers off of Long Island as the "fix" to their own mismanagement, agency underfunding, failures of national training initiatives, underpaying of developmental controllers, and a broken transfer system. For years, N90 has successfully fended off those attempts, and in the process, its controllers have rapidly turned the narrative of our building being a disaster, a place for trainee torment, on its head. I was at N90 until 2010, and came back ten years later--the old stories you hear our agency heads tell reporters today about our toxic culture are no longer close to accurate. N90, and the EWR sector at N90 specifically, has certified a record number of controllers over the past 5 years. EWR delays related to staffing reduced to near zero. Over the past several years, the 30+ air traffic controllers tasked with working the most complex airspace in the country responded to FAA threats of displacement with professionalism and intention. They did what the FAA told them needed to be done, and they went above and beyond to do it, all while not being sure whether they could buy a new house, or their partners should start a new job, or whether their children would soon need to attend a new school.

The FAA says to that, "no matter." The agency is now forcing its air traffic controllers to move away from their families, friends and communities while also jeopardizing the safety of the flying public. The plan has no basis in safety: we were closer than ever to being appropriately staffed, and their decision to tear us away from the sector actually REDUCES our staffing by 30%. It puts the onus on controllers to maintain the efficiency in our airspace, while being worse staffed, overstressed, and even more sleep deprived than we already were. It will drag several of us away from our wives or children for two years, or have entire families be uprooted for two years, just to have to move back. Imagine our stress. Wives, husbands and kids will be without their partners and parents to help with school pick ups, homework, doctors appointments, chores and so many other household responsibilities. Ailing parents and special needs children won’t have their family to help support and care for them. Children will be ripped from their schools, friends and doctors, displaced from their homes, communities and all they know. Our spouses will have to consider abandoning their jobs or changing course mid-career, in order to make the move work. The FAA cares little. As of this writing, I and my coworkers are three weeks away from being forced to PHL tower, and we have no official move date, have not had housing per diem approved for our families, have been struggling to find resources to find housing that fits our needs, and have been offered no upfront costs to do any of this. We are drowning in stress, every day.

The FAA has waded through this debacle by making up new contractual rules for us as they go along, and changing terms whenever they see fit. They've rejected legitimate grievances by claiming we're in a new category of directed reassignment that never existed before in the contract. In short, they're doing whatever they want and making us pay for it in the press, at work, and at home.

As a last resort, several of us have made the decision to seek outside counsel to try and hold the FAA accountable for this disastrous, pinheaded scheme. The retainer to file a lawsuit against the FAA is large, and as you can imagine, we are overburdened with expenses at the moment. We need your support. The flying public needs your support. Please consider donating. If we don't reach the necessary funds to pay retainer, all funds donated will be returned.