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.
shorter than we were in the 2019 shutdown.
Ah, so there was a shutdown in 2019 as well. Anyone know if there was anything in common between 2019 and 2025? In, idk the American government or something? Any important people in common between 2019 and 2025?
How dare you ask people to do some basic critical thinking!
I don’t see why you would do that job if know you’re going to frequently go for weeks / months without pay once every year or two, you’re constantly understaffed, and you’re working like this in 2025…
I actually think this is a risky play for the ruling class because the average USian rarely flies. It is the wealthy management class of the US that utilizes airline travel extensively, and their jobs are useless and in large part unnecessary.
What happens when the business shell game of moving naive idiots with expensive watches around on jets to give the appearance of important business happening is shattered when the people who do actual work in this country keep showing up and getting real work done while the management class is utterly grounded from flights being cancelled en masse?
If I was part of the ruling class this would be making me VERY worried.
No, the country is on fire sale. They’re loading up to head to greener pastures. Destroying US flight means that an alternative they’ve invested in can rise. Just wait until ATC globally is done in Chinese instead, then it’ll make sense.
I can’t really think of a country more reliant on air travel than the US. They should all just stop turning up for work.
Get out now, the government is never reopening and this will be our new future.
This is the small government the GOP base wanted.
Kinda hope THIS government never reopens but I’m not going to leave, I want to help establish the “something better” that’s going to come after this shit is gone.
what a terrible country
No government: good for the people oppressed by the State
No planes: good for the climate.
Unfortunately, the “people” benefiting most from less state “oppression” are corporations.
The rest of the people are still being plenty oppressed e.g. by masked goons claiming to work for the government. Shutdown or no shutdown.
Meanwhile, the government is literally letting people starve for political reasons.
As for the planes, I agree.
Yes, it seems that we’re focusing on the wrong thing here
The narrative shouldn’t be parties diagreeing on policy (to get the gov up again). The narrative should be on why the fuck we’re letting ICE and the executive continue to operate during a shutdown, and how we’re going to force them to cease and desist
no government means no one’s being paid to stop assholes who need enforced laws to keep them from fucking over humanity. Look at how bad it is now *with government and laws *
No government means we do it ourselves.
probably qualified for a drive-through job
“dallas approach this is united airlines 122 request landing”
air…
“dallas approach?”
“This is dallas eliza, how does landing make you feel?”
"Excellent question! This isn’t air traffic control. This is air traffic controlGPT. Here’s an outline on how to bring in your plane for a safe and effective landing:
- The first step—and this is critical—is to check for a runway. Without a runway, your landing may be bumpier than usual.
- …"
While this story kind of adds up and emotionally feels right… Always be wary those who aren’t providing the data. How many resigned?
It sucks being air traffic control, but getting a job in this climate is d*** near impossible If you’re a government worker.
You don’t need to censor yourself here, you can fucking swear whatever dick comment you want
Speech to text, helps me get my verbal diarrhea out faster. But let me try a curse: Barbara Streisand.
Could someone please explain to me what this shutdown is? I thought it’s only for government “meeting” for voting etc, but why it also affects federal workers?
No, the shutdown is because Congress didn’t pass a budget to allocate new federal funding. Which means that government agencies don’t have any money to pay employees. For most, this means they’re furloughed (essentially mandatory unpaid leave), because being forced to work without pay is also called slavery. Some positions, though (like ATC), are considered too vital to shut down so they do it anyway, and in the past provisions would be included in the budgets to give backpay as appropriate. There’s some worry that El Taco isn’t going to do that this time around, though.
But iys more complicated than that. Some functions, like military , are funded for multiple years, so they’re getting paid. And Republicans passed funding for gestapo, so they’re getting paid.
And a few things like SNAP (food stamps) have contingency funding because they’re too critical to interrupt …. Yet it’s still a victim of political games
I think I read na article that said the Pentagon diverted funding to pay wages so I guess they just HD extra money they could spend
So why doesn’t this trigger an election in America?
Because AmericaOS is still running v0.2 and has no provisions for federal level elections outside the normal election cycle.
We have no concept here of triggering an election. All of our Federal elections are for set terms, no matter what. We don’t have any notion of a “no confidence” vote in government. If we did, I bet it would fail every time.
Pretty much the entire US Constitution is built around the ideas of people acting in good faith. And, even with just the first thirteen states, that wasn’t a horrible idea. Understand that even the East Coast of the US still stretches across a good chunk of the modern day EU and the idea that you were electing a representative to travel for a few days to vote for you made more sense. Similarly, if they were a complete a-hole they would be shunned by all their rich white friends because that was poor decorum.
So the idea that you would have elected officials dismantling the government with no recourse was quite gauche.
Whereas many (most?) modern day parliamentary systems cover a much smaller amount of land and many of them actually date back to the mid 1900s where cars, planes, and phones were very much a thing and rapid un-fucking (or at least differently-fucking…) of the government was an option.
All of which goes to say that maybe we should spend less time glazing rich white slavers and more time modernizing the government
Excellent question.
It’s even worse than that. They passed a budget, but need a separate vote for actually authorizing the money to be spent.
Congress set it up this way, on purpose, so that small-government types would have an additional opportunity to negotiate shit that’s already been negotiated.
The house passed a budget that fucks over health care. The Senate has not
No, the budget was passed as the One Big Beautiful Bill. It was passed without Democratic support because the Senate used the Budget Reconciliation process to bypass the filibuster. But now, the Senate cannot again use Reconciliation to pass any of the two competing appropriations bills. (And as far as I know, neither bill actually performs the appropriations from the budget, and just keeps current spending levels in place, with the Democratic bill adding the healthcare fix.)
The OBBB includes provisions that fucks over healthcare. The House appropriations bill kept those things in place. The Senate rejected it, then the House stopped working.
The OB3 was not a budget. It was a series of laws/proclamations that would be funded in the future.
The fiscal year ended last month. Hence the need for a budget for the current fiscal year.
Please educate yourself more rather than spew propaganda that favors trump and the chuds.
The OBBB was passed through the budget reconciliation process, which allows it to be passed in the Senate without a cloture vote, but also limits it to strictly budgetary items. It is a budget bill, full stop. It has to be I order to be passed through the Reconciliation process.
The current shutdown has nothing to do with the budgetary process, it has to do with a lack of appropriations.
I don’t block many people, but I am blocking you, because you are a troll.
For the benefit of people who aren’t plugging their ears and screaming that daddy trump already fixed the economy:
I recommend actually reading through https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Big_Beautiful_Bill_Act as it is a fairly unbiased coverage.
But, in a nutshell: the OB3 is not a budget. It is a list of proclamations. Some of those have budgetary implications but they are only a subset of what the government is responsible for. The chuds not understanding what the government does? Just as crazy now as all the other fucking times it happens.
An actual congressional budget gets shockingly in depth. It is just that nobody, congress included, gives a shit about the individual line items.
As a metaphor that The Internet will lose its mind over because metaphors are complicated: The OB3 is like saying you are going to set aside money next year to go on a vacation… where you beat up trans people. It is a step towards a budget but it doesn’t say where that money comes from or what else you’ll do next year. That is the ACTUAL budget that needs to pass by the start of the fiscal year.
It’s a stupid American thing. They need a proper form of government.
It’s actually the opposite. Congress gets paid and should be working during a shutdown. Although shutdowns shouldnt even exist and only came out of an AG memo from the Reagan administration.
So, imagine you live at home in a completely dysfunctional family. You are responsible for grocery shopping. Your mother gives you $600 a month, and a weekly grocery list for $200 a week. You have to buy everything on the list. You can’t take more than $600 a month.
When you run out of money, your mom berates you for overspending. When you don’t buy everything on the list, she berates you for not doing your job.
That’s our federal government under normal conditions.
Now imagine that you’re a total piece of shit, but your abusive father won’t let your mother strangle you and bury you in the back yard.
That’s our federal government since January.
This is a horrible explanation, tbh. Or rather - it’s good up to the second to last paragraph when the whole thing just derails into off-topic.
Also: the $600 a month comes from both parents.
Also-also: it happened in October, not in January.
So, the fixed paragraph would be something like:
Now imagine that one month your parents can’t agree to who gives you what portion of the $600, or if the amount should be changed. This means that you’re not getting any money at all.
That’s our federal government since October.
I’d put it like this:
Your mom and dad give you a credit card plus $600 in allowance each month and expect you to cover all expenses, including groceries, maintenance, plus the cost of hiring a cleaning service using those, which totals $800 per month. Oh, also a bunch of guns, so it’s more like $1100 per month.
Anyways, every now and then, your credit card hits its limit and mom and dad need to agree to raise the credit limit. And if they don’t, then you refuse to pay for anything. Except the guns, but they are only like $300, so the $600 a month will cover them easily.
Oh but the cleaning staff should still come, they just won’t get paid until the credit limit is raised.
I get the joke and it is funny, but since we’re explaining stuff to someone who has no clue:
- The US military budget is barely something like 3% of the federal budget, so - if the budget was $800 - with “a bunch of guns” it would be $832. Hilariously, the healthcare budget is around 20%, which just shows how insanely fucked up the healthcare system is in the US.
- “The guns” are still not being paid during a shutdown. Republicans are now struggling to find some financing for the military, and just recently a “mystery donor” gave $130 mil so that soldiers could be paid. I guess they remembered that when you’re building a nazi state, you need military standing firmly behind you.
Also-also: it happened in October, not in January.
In my example, the indefinite “you” is an orange doofus who arrived in January.
I was a little inconsistent on who wanted to bury him and who was stopping him from being buried. Suffice it to say that everyone involved is terrible, and the best we can hope for is a giant meteor.
Basically, I explained both “What” and “Why”.
In my example, the indefinite “you” is an orange doofus who arrived in January.
That’s my point - you veered off into an off-topic tangent when the guy asked about the mechanics of a government shutdown.
best we can hope for is a giant meteor.
Couldn’t agree more!
Just replace them with AI, that should go well /s
Pretty sure this is the plan though, privatize and sell it to Trump’s buddies. Wouldn’t be surprised if Palantir or Oracle had a product in development.
In may Duffy announced equipment overhauls, they could have tapped a company around then too
I mean, it probably wouldn’t be worse…
inb4 he says “what’s the usecase for air traffic controllers anyway? just land wherever you see a free runaway”
I hope we can all agree that people should not be furloughed or working without pay during this shutdown but something I haven’t seen reported on is the effect this will have on economies locally and nationally.
Napkin math so someone correct me if needed:
- 4.5 million furloughed or working without pay.
- Average salary I found was $68,000 but let’s use 50,000 to account for the top paying jobs probably still getting paid.
- That gives us $4,166 monthly.
- For each month of shutdown that comes to $18,747,000,000 that isn’t being spent
While I’m sure most of us Americans could do with less consumption, I can’t help but wonder how many small businesses are going to suffer from this. This is especially true for areas with large amounts of federal employment.
Small businesses were already disproportionately suffering from the capricious tariff situation. And areas with large federal employment specifically were already suffering from the Doge chainsaw layoffs. This administration is just piling it on.
Good points, thank you for adding to the picture.
There are actually projections for the economic downturn to come that do and don’t factor in the government shutdown reaching thanksgiving, then Christmas. So it is being considered in terms of consumer spending as a whole, but you mentioned small businesses specifically, and they are the ones that will be hurt more than anyone in what’s to come. Although, I’m seeing more and more local-only-economies pop up, where you all try to keep money within the network of the community.
The projections I saw were for the economy to level off by 1Q 2026, but if the shutdown reaches Christmas, it’ll actually shrink an entire point.
At least I’m guessing those unpaid federal workers won’t vote republican for the rest of their lives
🤣 Sweet summer child
They still will
Did you see what happened in Virginia, where a whole bunch of federal workers and contractors live?
I don’t know what you’re referring to but in looking for whatever it is, I stumbled on this which seems to support my original statement quite strongly.
