Overtaxed and unpaid air traffic controllers are resigning “every day” due to stress from the government shutdown.
“Controllers are resigning every day now because of the prolonged nature of the shutdown,” Nick Daniels, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, told CNN.
“We hadn’t seen that before. And we’re also 400 controllers short—shorter than we were in the 2019 shutdown.”
Air traffic controllers are federal workers, which means they are part of the approximately 730,000 federal employees working without pay since the shutdown began on Oct. 1.
Well, none of the other shutdowns have gone on this long. I’m also struggling to remember any shutdown that’s gone on for any length in an economy this clearly bad and heading further downhill. Nor has there ever been a shutdown where the head of the government has said they won’t be paid in the end for time worked. It makes perfect sense for the ATC’s to prioritize themselves, their families and their finances over a system that consistently and chronically under-values them, over-works and over-stresses them, and has explicitly declared it has no loyalty or concern for the people who work there.
Cause this is the longest shutdown in history. The now second longest was during Trump’s first term…