Air traffic services are beginning a commercialisation process that is already widespread in airlines, airports and ground services worldwide. But with more experience of the key issues, this time unions are in a better position to influence the outcome. By Joe Magee

It was only going to be a matter of time before free market oriented governments and their “one-size-fits-all” deregulation advocates turned their attention to air traffic services as yet another public function to be asset-stripped for the benefit of private investors.

The specialist function that ensures the safe movement of aircraft in airspace and within airports is to be turned into yet another frontline for-profit business.

Never mind that the deregulation of airlines in the US in 1978, and the liberalisation of carriers and ground services in the European Union in the 1990s have provided scant evidence of benefits for passengers, workers or air transport-dependent communities. Never mind, either, the instability and unreliability they have caused. With little logic, the formula of enforced competition, less regulation and more commercialisation is now being promoted as the ideal solution to air traffic capacity constraints, airline delays and under-investment in incompatible systems.

To those aviation unions involved in defending the public service function of aviation the current debate has an ominous familiarity. No one, it seems, can explain how shareholders are expected to deliver benefits, efficiencies, and added safety, for the public good, or indeed why common ownership has supposedly failed.
The very same ideologues that point to the huge increases in air passenger numbers and flights as evidence that deregulation works, conveniently forget that this growth has been sustained by public air traffic services, managed as a governmental function and underpinned by public interest considerations.

Where there are problems with service delivery, evidence from audit authorities and parliamentary scrutiny committees shows that these have been largely due to short term under-investment by governments. This is particularly so in the areas of recruitment, training and implementation of new systems.

Managing air traffic involves dealing with a varying number of movements at any one time, which requires sophisticated technical skills and instant decision making. Controllers’ jobs and the engineering jobs that back them up are so specialised that in many instances not enough qualified employees can be secured to prevent short staffing. This situation creates permanent pressures on workload, with employees managing a maximum permissable quantity of traffic without sufficient back-up.

Deregulation has exacerbated this problem by removing the flexibility that was once a crucial part of the support system. Pay and remuneration systems are now designed on the basis of work volumes – rewarding more overtime, more single manning, more shifts worked without trainee assistance. These changes have been treated as organisational necessities even though it is clear they will have a significant impact on the quality of service and, potentially, on safety.

New commercial attitude

The new commercial attitude has led to serious short termism in developing the skills base of organisations, and in terms of infrastructure. In the case of National Air Traffic Services in the UK for example, privatisation coupled with economic difficulties has meant a piecemeal approach to the introduction of new technologies. Sometimes control computers have collapsed, causing major disruption even beyond the geographical areas for which they are responsible. Such disruption risks air safety and results in major stresses for employees.

Air traffic control, and the workers whose skill and dedication sustain much of the infrastructure of aviation, risk becoming victims of their own success, in what is generally a self financing non-profit activity. Private enterprises sense that there is money to be made. Air traffic services are natural monopolies and the commercialised providers want to reap more financial rewards by cutting costs and maximising revenues.

Canso, the worldwide organisation representing commercialised ATS providers, has become an aggressive promoter of privatisation. Global service corporations such as Serco are chipping away at support functions and want to be part of the action in core activities. Advocates of market forces, however, have some explaining to do, given the failure of the first privatised service, Nats of the UK, to meet its targets in terms of investment, service quality or reliability.

The ITF has drawn on its experience of the earlier deregulation in airlines and ground services in order to take a positive lead for employees in the ATS sector. This has meant increasing its membership through active recruitment, and co-operating with the professional associations – Ifatca, for controllers, and Ifatsea for engineers – as well as working collaboratively with colleagues in PSI – the Global Union for public service employees.

In the US, the ITF is working with affiliates to challenge President Bush’s de-recognition of air traffic services as a Federal function, and his subsequent redefinition of ATS activities as commercial, if not yet competitive, services. In Europe, aviation unions working through the ITF’s European arm the ETF, have shown that constructive engagement in the EU Single Skies project can improve the integration of fragmented national services. In this way they can deliver efficiencies without promoting commercialisation.

In francophone and equatorial Africa the ITF is developing a trade union forum to work with the integrated transnational ATS provider ASECNA. It has also recently approved a major project geared at strengthening organisation and representation for workers within the common Central American ATS agency. Similar projects are beginning in Asia, the Pacific and Latin America.

At the ITF Congress in Vancouver in August 2002, the Civil Aviation Section conference established a dedicated sectional committee for ATS employees. As a result these specialist workers will have autonomy within the international union movement to develop their own industrial policies and guarantee their voice in ITF decision making structures.

An inaugural meeting of the committee in early 2003 set key industrial and economic policies, and refined its strategies in light of the deregulation experiences of airline and ground handling services. The challenges are enormous but with the benefit of hindsight, civil aviation unions are prepared to meet them head on.

Joe Magee is the ITF’s Air Traffic Services adviser. For details of the policies agreed at the inaugural ATS sub-committee meeting obtain a sub-committee report from the Civil Aviation Section on aviation@itf.org.uk

The ITF’s air traffic services strategy will include: Autonomy in policymaking through a new ITF Air Traffic Services Committee Focus on economic and industrial issues Co-operation with the professional associations, IFACTCA and IFATSEA Regional activities to strengthen and support ATS unions Recruitment of air traffic unions into the ITF Emphasis on campaigning against commercialisation and privatisation