You can still do contract ATC work after 56.
The mystery to me is that AT shortages have been known fora. while now, so why haven't many more trainees been recruited?
ATC has been a shit career prospect for a while now so no one wants to enter training.
For one it requires uprooting your entire life to live near a training center, then they send you on an apprenticeship to a random airport in the country for a few years. And since there are only so many slots in the desirable metros, most people get sent to live somewhere “undesirable” to say the least.
For two, while trainees get paid they get totally fucked during government shutdowns. Many who make it to the funnel also quit at that point. Without fundamental structural changes to how they’re trained and paid at the political level, the number of trainees will remain small.
You can’t account for overtime in pensions because the employees will conspire to force overtime for retiring employees to bounce the pension up. Just a natural risk with an entity that can’t go bankrupt hiring people.
The money doesn't somehow make it sustainable for the people burning out their lives. Working 7 days a week, including overnight shifts, for 20 years to collect a pension seems like WELL earned compensation.
That's seems unrelated to "we have so few" and "we enmiserate the one's we do have".
It's hard to argue you're underpaid if, as a result of short staffing, you're getting paid more (both in absolute terms and per unit of effort) than you signed up for.