As the government shutdown enters its third week, air traffic controllers are bracing for financial uncertainty: potentially weeks of work without a paycheck.
Nick Daniels, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA), told Fortune the lack of compensation has heaped financial pressures on workers, who are already working six days a week for a total of 60 hours.
“To think that somehow we can live with, ‘You’ll get paid eventually,’ that doesn’t pay the creditors, that doesn’t pay the mortgage, that doesn’t pay gas, that doesn’t pay the food bill,” Daniels said. “No one takes IOUs, and the air traffic controllers are having to feel that pressure as well.”
The NATCA union, which represents more than 20,000 aviation safety workers, is looking into financial institutions providing no-interest loans. Some of the new workers just graduating from the FAA Academy in Oklahoma City and are being placed in new positions have been required to move cross-country without a guaranteed paycheck, Daniels said. Longtime controllers have stepped in to provide meals and support for them.
“It’s a world where they are now not only leaning on each other, they’re leaning on getting other jobs, going to their primary job in the day, and then in the evening, going out and having to do some level of a secondary job,” Daniels said.
Keeping morale up during the shutdown helps alleviate “that stress, that pressure, creating that fatigue, the unnecessary risk that it’s bringing into the system,” Daniels said.
White House spokesperson Kush Desai reiterated that the decision to end the shutdown rests on Democrats.
“Democrats could put an end to this disaster today by voting for the same clean funding bill that they voted for 13 times under Joe Biden—instead, they’re making everyday Americans pay for their stupid games,” he told Fortune in a statement.
Daniels insisted the impact of the shutdown on air traffic controllers was not just insular and would continue to impact the aviation sector and broader American economy.
“Controllers are not responsible for shutting and starting to shut down….The only people that can do that are the elected officials,” Daniels said. “That’s why the American people—we’re asking them to continue to stand up and say, ‘End this shutdown now.’ There is no scenario where we just have a game plan for no one having any money and continuing to work.”
