Collision Course: Ronald Reagan, the Air Traffic Controllers, and the Strike that Changed America

This book had obvious appeal to me since I spent my career in the FAA as an air traffic controller and was always active in NATCA. Hired in April of 1983 and a charter member of NATCA I can identify strongly with the problems faced by PATCO. As McCartin stated in the book, within two years of Reagan firing all the PATCO controllers efforts were already underway by the new recruits to get a union to represent us. As we were known to say they fired all the controllers, but the heavy handed authoritarian management were all still in place. During my career in the FAA I had contact with several of the key PATCO guys mentioned in this book. Mike Rock taught 2 Fac-rep classes I attended at the George Meany Labor Center in Silver Springs, MD. He was an unforgettable character who was a great teacher. He could tell some stories! And he really instilled the union activist spirit in us. John Leyden addressed one of my classes one day and then went out with us to a bar where we were able to pick his brain. He impressed me as a very intelligent and articulate man who was totally a union man. He worked in some capacity for the AFL-CIO at the time. I had numerous interactions with John Thornton including debating him on Long Island in front of a bunch of different NY locals. He was attempting to convince NATCA of the benefits of privatization and I opposed him, arguing we were better off to stay under the federal government. I had the pleasure of working with Bob and Valerie Butterworth for two months in Philadellphia as a part of NATCA's "Boots on the Ground" campaign to help elect Obama. They were both very interesting people and enlightened me on so much of the history of PATCO. Bob was also a colorful story teller. I rank him equal with Mike Rock! Mike Rock died of cancer in 2004 and, in what I consider to be a strange coincidence, John Thornton passed away just this past Monday, November 4, 2013 as I was reading this book.Concerning this book Valerie Butterworth wrote me that "We have read Collision Course and highly recommend it as the most accurate accounting of the history of PATCO!" If the Butterworth's (The Pres and Sis) recommend it you can count on it being good!"For Jack Maher and Mike Rock, the story came full circle. The friendship they had formed in Hangar 11 in the aftermath of the 1960 collision had provided the bedrock upon which PATCO had been founded. Like so many bonds forged through PATCO, their connection lasted to the end of their lives. Maher paid a final visit to his friend in April 2004. The two had seen each other less frequently as time went on. Health problems had kept Maher from meeting Rock in Las Vegas at the twentieth reunion of PATCO strikers. But now it was Rock's health that was failing; he was dying of cancer. Their last visit took place in a hospital room in West Islip, just a few miles from New York Center, where in 1967 they had chested the first meetings of PATCO's predecessor, the Metropolitan Controllers Association. Maher knew it was a farewell visit, and braced himself to say goodbye. Although they had gone their separate ways after 1981, the two men had remained close. "It was a funny friendship, because we were so different in so many ways, Maher observed. "Even when we never did agree, we agreed to continue on." The warmth of their friendship was rekindled as they reminisced during their last visit. But it was what Rock said when it was time for Maher to go that stuck with his friend. "Well, it's the end of the road, Jackie," Rock said. "It's all over." Maher realized then that Rock had spoken these same words when the two had met on that tense morning in PATCO's safe house on August 4, 1981, as the union they had founded was locked in struggle with a president, with so much hanging in the balance.Maher himself died four years later at the age of seventy-five. During the years between Rock's death and his own, he stayed in touch with PATCO veterans. He followed NATCA's contract negotiations and watched as the FAA struggled with a personnel crunch, as thousands of controllers hired after the strike began to reach retirement en masse. With growing concern, he also followed the labor movement's continuing struggles - its declining membership rates, diminished capacity to strike, inability to reform outdated labor laws. He also saw the storm clouds gathering, portending a deluge that might wash away the gains public sector workers had fought so hard for since the 1960s. As more and more private sector workers lost strong union protection, saw their incomes stagnate, their health care costs soar, and their retirements grow more precarious, Maher knew it would become easier for labor's opponents to isolate unionized government workers and characterize their salaries and pensions as inflated. He realized that an assault was coming against public sector unionism, the passionate cause to which he had devoted so much of his life. All of this convinced Maher that his good friend Mike Rock had been wrong about one thing after all: It was not over. PATCO's past was prologue - prologue to a story still unfolding."Location 7112 of 10785 - Kindle

I found this more captivating than I had expected. Excellent writing and very well-researched.

In the other reviews on this book, they all give excellent view points and thoughts on this book. Here are just some of mine.As a young adult in 1981 I vividly remember the Professional Air Traffic Controllers (PATCO) strike and the tension it caused in my neighborhood. You were either on the side of backing the union people, PATCO or you were on the side of the newly elected President Ronald Reagan. In my family we sided with the President. But this book not only gives incredibly accurate accounts of the talks between PATCO, The White House and the FAA, but also insites to the positive and negative sides of the contract talks. But what really makes this book such a wealth of knowledge is that history of PATCO.Starting with a mid-collison disaster in 1960 over Staten Island, one sees the beginning of what soon would become PATCO. The men, Jack Maher and Mike Rock who started the orginization that would be PATCO. A few years later the chance meeting of one of the men and attorney F.Lee Bailey who ended up becoming their legal consult and spokesman. Then comes the evolution from orginization to being certified as a union. Through these years you understand the air traffic controllers problems and frustrations of using out dated WWII and Korean War equipment to mounting pressure as air traffic grew in a short number of years to the lack of assistance from the FAA and much more. But then as PATCO changes presidents and grows and grows, so do the frustrations, the abuse and lack of respect from the White House from Presidents Kennedy, Johnson (dealing with the Vietman War), Nixon, Ford and Carter (the biggest back stabber of all). The number of times that PATCO did "sick-in's", "rolling delays" and actual strikes that will surprise you. PATCO becomes the little boy that cries WOLF one too many times and no one takes him seriously anymore!I won't spoil the end of the book when Carter seeks re-election and is challenged by R. Reagan. It's the twists and turns, the greediness and the deceptions by the union and the White House that makes this a fascinating read. The 1981 air controllers strike could have and was suppose to happened in 1979 or 1980. It's Ronald Reagon who gets the place in history for taking on and settling this challenge.This book is a must read for fans of unions, the airline industry and of Presidents. This topic is still a hot one the causes of many heated debates as I should know. Last year a good friend of mine, a union school teacher and I began talking about the merits of this subject. Needless to say the debate got ugly. But the amazing part of it is that when I mentioned the book, resited facts and asked if he would mind reading it, his only answer was no, it's all bologna. To future readers dont' close your mind to this fantastic book. Once you read it decide for yourself whether PATCO was right or wrong, was President Reagan right or wrong, or could a better solution come out of this. I will let you decide that for yourself!

-"Collision Course- The strike that changed America" di Joseph A. McCartin, ovvero la storia dei controllori di volo americani e della loro organizzazione nata per portare avanti le richieste della categoria, dagli incerti primi passi negli anni di Kennedy e Johnson, fino ai contrastati rapporti con le amministrazioni seguenti ed alla radicalizzazione dello scontro dopo il 1980, quando dopo un cambio di direzione all'interno del sindacato si giunse al capitolo finale con la richiesta di aumenti di salario nell'ordine di dieci volte superiori a quelli degli altri dipendenti statali americani.La drammatica decisione di scendere in sciopero (vietato tuttora per legge nel settore pubblico in America) nell'agosto 1981 portò all'ultimatum via TV del neopresidente Reagan di tornare al lavoro entro 48 ore, pena il licenziamento definitivo e la sostituzione nelle torri di controllo con del personale militare, cosa che traumaticamente avvenne due giorni dopo e che fu definitiva.E' una storia di passioni, uomini ed idee radicalmente diversi che hanno origine nei primi anni sessanta in un'America percorsa da molti fermenti, viaggiano paralleli per molti anni ed arrivano poi a scontrarsi in modo inevitabile.Un libro a 360 gradi, che descrive un episodio cruciale delle relazioni industriali negli USA e fornisce un quadro imparziale ed esauriente delle ragioni (molte) e degli errori di valutazione (idem) sia degli scioperanti che del governo che li mandò a spasso.

Excellent Service.