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At week's end the FAA ordered the nation's 22 largest airports to cut scheduled flights back to 50% for at least a month in order to reduce any delays and ensure safety. The agency also announced plans to triple the number of new air controllers it trains, currently 1,800 a year, and began accepting applications for the jobs once held by the fired PATCO strikers. In New York City alone, 1,763 people signed up in the first five hours. The Government was preparing to fly without PATCO forever. Declared a confident Transportation Secretary Drew Lewis, who piloted that strikebreaking course under close White House supervision: "To all intents and purposes, the strike is over. Our concern is to rebuild the system."
Some 3,000 supervisors and 2,000 nonstriking or nonunion controllers were manning the towers and radar centers that monitor U.S. air flights. A backup force of some 500 military controllers, out of an available pool of 10,000, rushed to major air centers. They began studying civilian control procedures, and would begin to take up shifts this week if needed. Up to 700 military controllers can be reassigned to civilian posts with only a minimal effect on military operations; if the FAA needed more than 700, selective cutbacks in military flights would be required.
The strikers, as stubborn and high-spirited a bunch as ever hit the bricks, did not, of course, concede defeat. Despite the overwhelming Government pressure, they continued to picket airports from LGA (La Guardia) to LAX (Los Angeles International), rallying behind their bearded, owlish-looking president Robert E. Poli in an unusual show of solidarity. Poli, 44, a former controller himself, called the Administration's actions "the most blatant form of union-busting I have ever seen." Vowed he: "It will not end the strike."
The controllers predicted that the air system cannot survive long without them and that the fines and firings, which do not become final until a lengthy civil service appeals process is completed, will be lifted once this becomes apparent. Meanwhile, as Air Controller Eric Sletten said on a picket line at Miami International Airport: "Reagan's hard line is just hardening our line."
That seemed to be true. The union's abrupt walkout and the Administration's swift retaliation had left neither side any face-saving way to resume negotiations, particularly since the Government considered the bulk of PATCO's constituency no longer strikers but simply among the unemployed. The FAA even took steps to decertify PATCO as the legal bargaining agent for the controllers. Justifiably confident that public opinion was solidly on his side and still basking in his legislative triumphs on Capitol Hill, the President massed a historic show of force against the first labor union to challenge his Administration directly. Ironically, PATCO had been one of the few unions to support him for election last fall.
Reagan's tough reaction to the strike was reminiscent of Franklin D. Roosevelt's wartime order to draft striking coal miners in 1943, then to have the Government seize and operate the mines.