One thing people forget is that the key complaints PATCO's members had were:

  1. outdated equipment
  2. staffing levels
  3. workload and fatigue

Reagan went to war with the union instead of addressing these things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Professional_Air_Traffic_...

Wasn't it Congress who passed 5 U.S.C. § 7311. which says a person may not “accept or hold” a federal job if they “participate in a strike” against the U.S. government.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/7311

originally passed as

https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?edition=2023&num=0&req=g...

So arguably if Reagan had not fired them he would be failing to uphold the laws of the United States.

Pretty much everything broken in the USA stems directly from Reagen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g95fiZCzjlo

You don't need a union to have effective management. It should also be their incentive not to cause people's death by overworking employees. Which is also dumb because it costs more to overwork then hire appropriately with overtime laws... cops exploit this all the time to steal money from taxpayers. (The ones in Seattle only get caught when they accidently charge over 24 hours of overtime in a day)

Union rules that say only a particular classification of employee is allowed to pick up a small package from a loading dock and move it twenty feet are also bad.

The blame can go to the top, for not managing correctly.

There have been six presidents who could have addressed this since Reagan. Every one of them shoulders some of the responsibility.

Or instead of pointing fingers we can uses our brains to solve the problems and increase safety.

You could spend a ton of time and money automating the process, and probably should especially in the future with the proliferation of drones.

But in the meantime there are simple solutions. Tunnels. No ground vehicles should be crossing runways when then could go under.

The issue is the shortage, which that doesn't address. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Was in three different unions. Union didn't do squat for me. Mainly kept my wages down and gave the friends of the union rep the best shifts.