Summary
Elon Musk called on retired air traffic controllers to return to work, citing a shortage amid heightened scrutiny of the FAA under Trump’s second term.
With DOT Secretary Sean Duffy’s support, Musk’s DOGE attempts to “upgrade” aviation systems despite recent FAA job cuts.
The AP reports fired employees included radar and navigational aid maintenance personnel, though Duffy insisted no “critical safety personnel” were terminated.
Musk’s appeal comes amid increased public concern over recent aviation incidents, though experts consider the uptick an anomaly.
Well if it isn’t the consequences of his own actions.
Fucked around ✅
Found out 👈
Not really, tbh. He’s pretty clearly just doing as much damage as he possibly can. This whole “Oooh whoopsie, we did a bad, does anyone want their job back?” shit is pure show to give himself some plausible deniability to keep the guillotines at bay.
If you look at what’s happening through the lens of his goal being malice, and ignore the “ooooops!” pony show, what you see is a man who’s hamstrung an entire nation with literally zero consequences.
Honestly, this one’s not even completely his own fault. Standard bureaucratic ossification has been fucking up ATC staffing for years now. The pay is low, the qualifications are steep, and the responsibility and stress is insane. Why would someone do that? And so, people don’t. And, on top of them, management from both the business and political sides simply doesn’t give a fuck about safety or morale.
The levels of traffic were just recently increased in that DC airspace where the plane hit the helicopter, and at the time, a bunch of qualified people were trying to raise the alarm that some bad shit was going to happen if they stuffed more aircraft into an already overcrowded area. No one in a position to make any of the decisions cared, and they did it anyway. That all happened before Trump and Elmo came into the picture.
Of course, it is true that their own actions have produced some additional consequences now. They’ve fired a bunch more people and demotivated all the existing or prospective ones pretty much as much as it is possible to do. And, as much as the existing systems are aging and in need of some modernization, it’s absolutely guaranteed that whatever Musk does to “improve” them will make them even worse. All I’m saying is that he didn’t entirely create the bad situation he is now about to amplify tenfold.
“There is a shortage”
ah damn i love that language. reminds me of the boss that abused my mother back when she was still in employment. “there is a shortage, you need to come over on your day off, otherwise we can’t handle the workload”. how about employing more people? no? maybe because you can’t find another fool who will do the work with these bad working conditions?
There has been a shortage for a decade, and the post is literally Musk trying to hire early retirees to fill staffing shortages.
There’s no such thing as a labor shortage, especially if it’s been long enough to train more ATCs. If the pay is high enough, then people will come out of the woodwork.
The work is difficult, and the expectations and stress are high. They 100% need to pay better, but the pool of qualified candidates is already fairly small.
Yet it’s larger than the number of people required.
Sounds like they need to increase pay and reduce the number of hours worked while still getting a salary and benfits to entice more people to the position and make the stress more bearable for those they can get to fill the position. It’s not a matter of how many people are qualified it’s a matter of how many people want to make the tradeoffs to work there and be upskilled to meet the requirements. If your deal is not enticing enough, you need to restructure how the position works in order to entice more people for the position.
retiring at 56, and only able to apply until the age 30, doesnt make it very unappealing to people at all, especially when people retire in thier 60s and 70s in many less stressed jobs.
Maybe increase the pay so they aren’t searching for another job when they are forced to retire at 56 without training for another career. And also decrease hours needed to work per week to account for the additional stress they face so they can recoup. You would surely have more people applying when taking these factors into account.
Moron with history of fucking shit up fucks shit up. No one stops him. Some applaud. Start the wood chipper.
- Claim a federal agency is inefficient
- Fire employees and defund agency
- Agency performs worse than before
- Point finger at the agency showing how it is incompetent
- Move to privatize agency
- $$$$$$$
That’s been the Republican M.O. for like 40 years.
lol bet he just found out that his private jet also has to wait in line.
I used to work for Amazon in a division I didn’t feel grimey for. Spent over 7 years of my life in that division, doing great things and recurringly got top performer review status and was even awarded role model on top of that on several occasions.
Then they laid me off in 2023, after my latest review of “top performer” & award of “role model”.
About 2 weeks ago a recruiter reached out to me for a role in AWS and I responded with, “Amazon shouldn’t have laid me, a top performer and role model, off if they’d like me to work for them.”
ATCs should give this response to Musk.
they did a wave massive layoffs in tech in 2023, my bro was included i knew he would be a target, because if you earning that much income, its bound to happen.
My friend just retired. Today.
He’d been working the same job a decade, but he did about half his career with the same company.
He consistently made 10% less because #union, but it was consistent and reliable. Now he gets half pay until he dies.
People chasing that Amazon pork, I’m thinking made a mistake.
Shame you can’t do the same with CEOs
A friend of mine was laid off in a firing of 300 workers. A couple of years later, a new upper manager comes in and tries to hire 500.
The people making decisions at large corporations have no idea what’s happening on the ground, they just see major shareholders, a budget and expenses.
US law mandates retirement at 56 for Air Traffic Controllers due to the high stress and fast-paced multi-tasking nature of the job
It’s considered one of the most mentally challenging jobs there are.
You mean that people who work in one of the highest-stress jobs in the world might not want the added stress of being potentially shitcanned at any second by this apartheid manchild?
This is so easy to fix. Just ask the remaining ATCs to put in 30 more hours per week. If there is a safety law which needs to be amended to make this happen, just amend it. Remove all the rules and safeguards. We should do it like the Tesla factories.
Look. More air accidents will happen. People should be ready to sacrifice themselves. It’s that easy.
So easy to fix.
PS: /s for some of you who may need it…
We also need to brace ourselves for hardship. I mean Elon won’t be facing monetary hardships but you will. So brace for that.
Elmo will be facing hardship before he dies.
All his companies rely either on bubbles (hello Tesla!) or pure government assistance (hello SpaceX!) and the guy is a few marbles short of a dozen. He is literally a scammer who got extremely lucky. He is also insufferable to literally everyone around him, even his own family. It won’t last.
How, exactly, are we to brace ourselves for any of this?
Learn about growing, preparing, and preserving food. Learn how to repair things. Make connections with like-minded people in your IRL community.
Grow things? Are you suggesting we all go back to an agratiat culture where we all make our own food?
Because in that case be prepared to go back to the 1600’s and anarchy. There won’t be enough food for everyone and without artificial fertilizer and industrial farming, the world can sustain about 2 billion people tops. Good luck with that.
But what happened to move fast and break things?
They’re broken. We’re onto step 2
- Move fast and break things
- ???
- Profit
It’s weird to see people all over the place mocking Elmo for this…
Like, he knows no one in their right mind would want to start federal service right now. They treat feds like shit, make wild cuts they know will effect actual essentials. Go on national news and the billion dollar social media websites they own to shit talk fed, even have the head of the DoD call federal workers lazy and a drain on the nation in a public memo for for some reason now comes with a video.
The entire thing isn’t just designed to shrink the federal government, but to then replace it with contractors they “manage” and take a huge chunk of the wages from for the privilege of a job for less than feds got and zero worker protections.
Just lining their own pockets in a legal manner because “no one wants to be a fed”.
Meanwhile 50% of the country cheers him on, and damn near the rest can’t see more than two steps ahead.
Why the fuck haven’t people started learning to plan ahead yet?
Or at least read a damn history book. Fascist aren’t typically original.
Fucking beg, fascist bitch.
Maybe fill in the blanks with racist assholes? I want to watch that work itself out.
No no. Pay is what he needs to do.
¿Por que no los dos?
My thoughts exactly
As a guy who has to travel for work. I hope that these guys tell him to pound fucking sand
Really highlights how stupid Republicans and Musk really is and how his companies thrived despite his leadership not because.
Good luck to you. I’m not setting foot on a plane until this administration is over with (assuming there is an end to it).
Ah the move fast and break things doesn’t work? I’m shocked, shocked!
