alt Hacker NewsThe shortage of ATC staff dates back to the Clinton Administration. It’s just hard to attract people into a 5+ year training program for a very stressful job where you might get bounced near the end with no payout and no transferrable job skills.
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I think you mean Reagan. He removed the union for the ATC not Clinton.
Honestly, you can generally just blame Reagan for about anything. A presidency about weaking labor, strengthening Iran, and ballooning the deficit is uh never going to leave good traces.
Not just attract, it also has very high standards. And many people fail out.
Somehow Europe manages to do that well enough.
ATC/GTC seems like a really strong candidate for partial automation with recent advances in AI. Obviously we'd still want some expert humans in the loop for exceptional situations, but I have to imagine there's a way to significantly reduce the cognitive burden/stress for these folks.
No the shortage goes back to Regan when their justified strike was busted. It ended the PATCO “union” and was a negative turning point for labour unions in general.