[phoe-krk]

Please correct me I'm wrong:

> The ad also highlights the salary on offer to controllers, saying it is $155,000 (£115,000) after three years of work.

Unless the US government shuts down again, at which point you stop being paid, you are required to keep working, you have no right to strike[0], and the competences you've built across this job are largely hard to directly make use of elsewhere so the incentive to job-hop is low.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Air_Traffic_Contr...

[pjc50]

This is why shutting down the right to strike is a short term approach: you can't make people choose to start or keep working in your sweatshop, so eventually you run out of staff.

[phoe-krk]

> you can't make people choose to start or keep working in your sweatshop

If you're a government, you can; it's called a draft. The US seems to be preparing for it.

[pjc50]

Can't really corveé labour skilled jobs which require passing a lot of exams. Even in the military.

[defrost]

What you can do, at state scale, is pass everybody through a services training filter and sit them under the sorting hat after three months to winnow out skills and potentials of interest.

Some are clear rejects, some are good for getting up early and walking perimeters, others would suit the motor pool. An occasional few will gel for traffic control, signal intell, etc.

The trick then, for a state, is to incentivize with carrots, sticks, patriotic abstractions like duty, etc. the ones they want for the jobs they have.

Now its time for levelling up training.

[eesmith]

The characters in the movie and TV series MAS*H included unwilling civilian draftees who were doctors drafted to serve in the Korean War.

Doctors need to pass a lot of exams.

[general1465]

You can draft a doctor, from pool of doctors. You can't draft ATC, because there is no pool of spare ATCs. It would be like drafting air defense operators - there is no pool of them outside military.

[eesmith]

I'm pretty sure some of the air traffic controllers for military airfields in WWII were draftees, just like many air defense operators were draftees before the military became an all-volunteer force in 1973.

We know from the PATCO strike there is a pool of spare ATCs, including "military controllers, and retired personnel who temporarily returned to service". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Professional_Air_Traffic_...

Thus, retired civilian personnel is a possible draft pool for a skilled job like ATC which require passing a lot of exams.

That pool is small, certainly, but it was enough to break PATCO.

[johng]

If the recent news about moving lots of soldiers from EU Nato installations back home is true, they'll have a ton of trained active military ATC's available to use in the US soon.

[arvid-lind]

I think you've forgotten that the original post was about hiring gamers to do this job.

[general1465]

Which they can't do unless they are heavily trained.

[probably_wrong]

I think people here may enjoy John Oliver's report on how bad the situation for air traffic controllers currently is.

Jump to minute 18 for a discussion on floppy disks or, appropriately, to minute 25 for an "honest recruitment ad".

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YeABJbvcJ_k&t=1539

[Jamesbeam]

Reminds me a lot of his report on nuclear security.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y1ya-yF35g

A lot of times as a citizen I think you feel that something is "off" with different Government jobs but can’t put what exactly.

And then you watch one of those reports and be like "holy duck, how can it be this bad and what are they doing to my people and with my taxes?"

Different country, but a lot of times when dealing with the government I think why are the people working there always grumpy, and then one gave me the "tour" of what they have to deal with that is hidden from the public eye.

Working toilets? Nah, they had to go outside around the building into Porta Potty’s.

He showed me like fifty places in the building with mold. Not the fun white one you get on cheese. I am talking about black fungus out of stranger things eating half the wall. Some offices had signs saying working in a different office today with the date printed to 1998. Inside water was dripping from the ceiling.

He is like that’s why we are grumpy. Ever since I bring a piece of cake and some hot coffee when I have to deal with government employees and thank them for their service. They are allowed to be grumpy working under conditions I would expect from a third world country.

[spwa4]

No right to strike? So then we go back to playing high school games. Report in sick. Use one of the many tricks to actually be sick.

[eudamoniac]

You don't stop being paid, you just get your payment delayed.

[phoe-krk]

Is there any kind of interest on this delay? Otherwise it's an involuntary zero-percent loan to the government, so, given inflation and fees for borrowing money, it's a net loss either way.

[eudamoniac]

Absolutely negligible. Please stop with the propaganda. Everyone is fine with a 2-week delay for payroll, but wait a couple more weeks and it's suddenly you "stop being paid" and give a "loan to the government". There are plenty of downsides to being ATC but this one is not a genuine framing.

[mplanchard]

Many people are living paycheck to paycheck. A month or two of missed payments can have a ton of downstream consequences.

[eudamoniac]

Air traffic controllers making $155,000 are not the same people going homeless from a month or two of missed payments.

[mplanchard]

a) it’s possible to live at the edge your means regardless of where you are relatively to the poverty line.

b) It’s not a bad salary for an individual, but supporting a family of 3-5 on $155k does not leave a lot of room for error

[phoe-krk]

> Everyone is fine with a 2-week delay for payroll

I don't know where this assumption comes from. I'm not. With the increasing number of people living paycheck to paycheck, your "couple more weeks" means a growing risk of homelessness among other things.