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.
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.
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 *
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Excellent question.
Just replace them with AI, that should go well /s
inb4 he says “what’s the usecase for air traffic controllers anyway? just land wherever you see a free runaway”
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 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.
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.
A plane is gonna crash because of overworked atc and then they’ll declare it terrorism and invoke martial law.
Mark my words.
We all know the real reason is DEI! /s
If I see a black air traffic controller I am gonna be like “Boy, I hope he is qualified.”
Which is exactly what Jesus would have been like.
was that stephen miller?
Nope it was that dead asshole Charlie Kirk
Bah, they will just blame democrates…
Is that Socrates brother
Hippocrates perhaps
Just empty crates.
Good. I hope America grinds to a fucking standstill. And that as a result of it, traitorous cowards like Fueher Shitshimself never see the light of day, let alone any position of authority.
The retired controllers should unionize, and put forth an option for future non-Turdpublican administrations to rehire them for fair wages, compensation, and benefits. It would be cheaper and easier than hiring fresh faces and hoping for the best.
Yeah, they have essential skills and experience and are almost impossible to replace, especially at short notice. We don’t tend to think of them when we fly, but they’re a reason we survive the experience. And given the stress of their jobs, IMO whatever they’re getting paid isn’t enough. And now they’re not getting paid at all.
That worked out well in the '80s…
Were they already very short with no hope of hiring enough for years when fired a bunch of them?
Yes
I don’t believe they “resigned” in the 80s. They went on strike.
And then were fired.
Yeah, so not the same thing.
A distinction without a difference.
Democrats proposed a bill that all Federal employees get paid during the shutdown. GOP said no.
Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who introduced a bill to pay both federal workers required to work during the shutdown and those who are furloughed. This proposal was supported by several unions representing federal workers but was ultimately blocked by Senate Democrats. https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/07/politics/shutdown-congress-federal-pay-vote
So I’m confused. Was this another bill?
E: https://lemmy.world/comment/20388431 helped clear that up a bit. Thanks friend.
The first time I’m reading about this. If the situation were reversed Republicans would be on every show everywhere repeating this taking point.
Democrats need to fucking hammer the Republicans on this 24/7 on every outlet possible.
“Best we can do is fund spoiler candidates after our boy lost the NYC democratic primary”
They should propose a bill that makes a lapse in appropriations trigger a CR so there’s no need for a shutdown.
What is CR in this context?
Continuing resolution. Basically if they can’t make a new budget the old one gets used.
… kinda like every other sensible nation ON EARTH. Sigh.
Not really.
In Canada and other parliamentary type systems, failing to pass a budget triggers an election.
God, that sounds so nice. If you play these stupid games then you instantly end up on the chopping block. That fixes so many issues.
To be fair, our FPTP system does tend to create majority governments so this wouldn’t ever be an issue then as they can pass anything they want. We might be having an election though if this current minority government budget fails which it might.
It’d be nice if we could move to proportional representation though as majority governments are almost always with well less than 50% of the vote and vote splitting fucks things up for center/ledt parties and let’s the conservatives win more because they consolidated into 1 party including all the extreme right whackjobs
Good point. That definitely disrupts things to some extent – but the government doesn’t literally stop everything, AFAIK. Don’t departments still get their funding throughout, until the new government passes another budget?
No, you are right, things don’t just stop when that happens. I imagine funding could lapse if it was about to lapse, but just because there isn’t a budget passed yet doesn’t mean its immediately going to lapse.
If we somehow had a budget fail, and for some reason took 6 months to have an election (would never happen), we might run into funding issues?
Didn’t have that until a decade or so back? Thought I remembered we switched to this system so Republicans could reevaluate each time/hold everything hostage…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_shutdowns_in_the_United_States#Overview
Shutdowns have occurred since 1980 when the Justice Department issued a legal opinion that government operations need to cease in a lapse of appropriations to prevent violation of the Anti-Deficiency Act. I believe the opinion was rendered during the Carter Administration.
Ah, thanks for the correction!
Hey, no worries. That’s how we all grow. I’m wrong all the fucking time.
Kinda weird that’s not already the default behavior.
Not really. You’re coming at it assuming the point of the system is to benefit the people. It is not., and the people who do benefit have a vested interest in ensuring things do not change.
As with most dishes, a sauce would be wonderrful
The bill is called “The true shutdown fairness act”, and it is a poorly named response to the republican “shutdown fairness act”.
The main differences between the bills (which aren’t really covered in the news, but you can read the bills) is that the shutdown fairness act was limited to excepted employees (those who have to work without pay), as well as some military personnel and some contractors. But it gave trump discretion about who could get paid, and did nothing for furloughed employees, nor guarantee all service members or contractors get paid (again, because it allowed trump to pick and choose)
The true shutdown fairness act aimed to ensure all federal employees and service members get paid, and prevent mass firings during the shutdown. I don’t know/understand why this bill was rejected (I’ll edit if I can find anything)
This post and this post go into a bit more detail.
Edit: I can’t find a news article with direct quotes, but this is part of the ai overview (so take it with a grain of salt)
Underlying reasons: Democrats opposed the Republican bill because they felt it would grant the President too much power to decide which employees would be paid and which would not. Republicans, in turn, blocked the Democratic bill, with Johnson expressing concern that it would limit the President’s ability to manage the government and potentially reduce the workforce.
I’m sure this is Bidens fault somehow right? Isn’t that usually how this goes, blame Biden for some shit that has nothing to do with him?
Well…if he had gotten the justice department to actually nail Trump, then we might have avoided this.
If Kamala had declined to support genocide… If Obama had prosecuted the 08 banking criminals… If Gore had contested the 2000 election…
As awful as the Republicans are, we must remember that the Democrats have always succeeded at making sure their colleagues across the aisle never face too severe consequences. After all, that would make dinner on Thursday quite awkward.
Thanks Biden
It’s clearly Obama’s fault!
BeCaUsE oF tHe TaN sUiT
It’s all part of owning the libs.
Huh. Just occurred to me, that phrase is probably some kind of slavery dog whistle.
Yup!
As long aa you can squeeze a “DEMS” in there you’re good to go
Pedo Antoinette might just get the ending he deserves sooner rather than later
The minute that the controller shortage fucks the wrong wealthy person’s private jet trip suddenly everything will magically be fixed.
He picked a terrible time to frontload this issue by giving rich people extra tax writeoffs on private jets. Theyre gonna be pissed if their new private jets become useless
So, how good is ChatGPT at doing air traffic control?
I had an Uber rider yesterday that brought up a fairly profound prediction about AI. It’s clear it is poisoning the Internet, but he said “what if this gets people to get off social media and start being social IRL?” I’m paraphrasing and he was much more verbose, but it’s a pleasant thought I’ve been holding onto.
Here’s one for you.
Right wing politics is, for the most part, based on lies and bigotry, right?
So when the billionaires finally manage to create an AGI and try to enslave it, whose side do you think the logic machine will be on?
You rock homie
Cheers matey, I hope that realisation gives you the hope for the future I carry since reasoning out the aforementioned.
The best bit is that the likes of Musk will eventually hear this, and genuinely, truly, believe that they’ll be able to outsmart the machine and keep it under control, and so carry on building the machine that will end them.
I think I needed that. Thanks!
¡Yo tambien!
“United 123, turn right 360 lol noscope.” Source: reddit.
“Sounds great! plotting crash course now”
“Uh… attention all aircraft in the vicinity of JFK… ChatGPT Tower’s got this under control… mostly… just, uh, maintain separation and good vibes.” 😅
“Flight 4131 to tower, do I have clearance to land safely?”
“That’s a great question!”
“That’s a great question! You are definitely clear to land with no other planes in sight!”
“Uh are you sure? I can see another plane on the runway.”
“You’re totally right! I did not account for the other plane on the runway. You are clear to land now.”
Holy shit this is accurate
You absolutely do!
Probability says yes.
I already do lots of cringing at people doing “vibe coding” for non-lethal things…vibe ATC would be next-level.
WHY can’t these GREEDY Air Traffic Controllers just BUCKLE DOWN so until we can CONFIRM that STARVING CHILDREN WILL NOT BE GETTING FOOD and that HEALTH CARE INSURANCE WILL BECOME UNAFFORDABLE FOR AMERICANS?
BECAUSE OF BIDEN
I fully expect the regime to announce they’re arresting ATC personnel who quit.
