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american airlines
Watchdog Warns DOGE Cuts to FAA Make Next Airline Disaster 'More Likely'
"Maybe in the DOGE boys' video game simulations, it doesn't matter if they lay off hundreds of staff from the FAA. In the real world, however, it will make flying less safe," said Public Citizen's Robert Weissman.
Feb 17, 2025
As the Trump administration began firing hundreds of Federal Aviation Administration employees amid a surge in plane crashes, a leading U.S. consumer advocacy group warned Monday that the slash-and-burn approach of Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency is making the "next air travel disaster more likely."
While Musk recently said that DOGE will "aim to make rapid safety upgrades to the air traffic control system," critics have countered that the Trump administration's termination of FAA personnel, including critical air traffic control maintenance staff, poses major risks.
"Maybe in the DOGE boys' video game simulations, it doesn't matter if they lay off hundreds of staff from the FAA. In the real world, however, it will make flying less safe," Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman said in a statement. "Just like having fewer people safeguarding the nation's nuclear arsenal will make the risk of a nuclear accident much greater."
Elon’s DOGE rampage will be a wake up call for what a decimated government really means. Cuts to FAA? Higher risk of plane crashes. Cuts to Forest Service? Higher fire risk. Cuts to the CDC? Higher pandemic risk. Cuts to the EPA? Higher toxic exposures risk — and on and on.
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— Public Citizen (@publiccitizen.bsky.social) February 17, 2025 at 11:03 AM
Weissman continued:
The Musk rampage through government is making it virtually certain that we will suffer through otherwise avoidable health, safety, and economic catastrophes. Cutting the Forest Service increases fire risk, cutting the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and blocking information-sharing risks worsening infectious disease outbreaks, cutting the [Consumer Financial Protection Bureau] guarantees Big Bank and predatory loan ripoffs, cutting [Food and Drug Administration] staff increases the risk for dangerous devices, drugs, and food additives, cutting the [Environmental Protection Agency] will increase the risk of mass toxic exposures, and on and on.
"If permitted to proceed, the mindless Musk-Trump governmental annihilation is going to touch every American community, imposing tragedy upon tragedy," Weissman added.
In a Monday social media post, U.S. Congressman Don Beyer (D-Va.) said that "mass firings of FAA workers—at a time when they already have serious staffing problems—would be dangerous at any time," but "Musk and Trump doing this weeks after the deadliest crash in years is stupid beyond belief."
Public Citizen's warning came on the same day that a Delta Air Lines flight from Minneapolis to Toronto crashed and overturned on landing. The FAA said all 80 people aboard the flight were rescued. At least a dozen people were injured in the crash, three of them critically, according to the Toronto Star.
While the FAA firings were not a factor in Monday's accident, the Toronto crash was the latest in a recent surge in air disasters. Last month, 67 people were killed when an American Airlines jet and an army helicopter collided at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Washington, D.C. According to initial reports, only one air traffic controller was working both civilian and military flights when the crash occurred.
On January 31, seven people died when a medical transport jet crashed near Philadelphia, 10 people were killed in a February 6 Bering Air commuter flight crash in Alaska, and one person died when a private plane belonging to Mötley Crüe singer Vince Neil crashed during landing in Arizona last Monday after its landing gear failed to properly deploy.
We condemn the decision to fire these safety inspectors. Everywhere I go I am asked, “is it safe to fly?” My response is yes because thousands of frontline workers ask that all day long. If federal workers can’t do their jobs, we can’t do ours. 1/2 www.passnational.org/index.php/ne...
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— Sara Nelson (@flyingwithsara.bsky.social) February 15, 2025 at 1:59 PM
David Spero, national president of Professional Aviation Safety Specialists, the union representing more than 11,000 FAA and Defense Department personnel who install, inspect, and maintain air traffic control systems, said in a statement Saturday that the Trump administration's terminations "will increase the workload and place new responsibilities on a workforce that is already stretched thin."
"This decision did not consider the staffing needs of the FAA, which is already challenged by understaffing," Spero added. "Staffing decisions should be based on an individual agency's mission-critical needs. To do otherwise is dangerous when it comes to public safety. And it is especially unconscionable in the aftermath of three deadly aircraft accidents in the past month."
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'Poverty Doesn't Fly': Ahead of Thanksgiving, Charlotte Airport Workers Strike
"We're on strike today because this is our last resort. We can't keep living like this," one cabin cleaner said.
Nov 25, 2024
Service workers at Charlotte Douglas International Airport walked off the job Monday in order to protest low wages and unfair labor practices.
The employees work for two American Airlines subcontractors, ABM and Prospect Airport Services, and carry out essential tasks like cleaning airplane interiors, collecting trash, and escorting passengers who are in wheelchairs. They voted to authorize a 24-hour strike this past Friday.
The workers are represented by Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which released a statement Monday announcing the strike and saying that the employees are demanding "an end to poverty wages and respect on the job during the holiday travel season," according to WCCB Charlotte. SEIU represents about 700 workers at CLT, a spokesman told the The Charlotte Ledger Monday.
In addition to a late-morning rally, the workers plan to hold a "Strikesgiving" lunch "in place of the Thanksgiving meal that many of the workers won't be able to afford later this week," union officials said. WCNC Charlotte showed workers picketing early Monday morning with signs that read "Poverty Doesn't Fly" and "Respect Black and Brown Workers."
The strike could be disruptive, given that the Charlotte airport estimates that it will process upwards of a million passengers between this past Thursday and the Monday following Thanksgiving.
In a statement sent around to press, the union said that most workers earn between $12.50 and $19 and hour, which they called insufficient.
According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Living Wage Calculator, a living wage in the Charlotte metropolitan area is $23.26 an hour for one adult with no children.
"We're on strike today because this is our last resort. We can't keep living like this," ABM cabin cleaner Priscilla Hoyle said in a statement, according to CBS News. "We're taking action because our families can't survive."
Workers picketed on Friday to draw attention to their labor action. At the picket, one worker told local news that he's currently living in a storage unit, and that his current wage isn't enough to get a one- or two-bedroom apartment.
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US Strike Wave Could Soon Grow as Airline, Healthcare Workers Fight for Decent Contracts
"We are not alone," said the Association of Professional Flight Attendants. "Our struggle is part of a larger struggle by working people standing up against corporate greed."
Sep 21, 2023
The nationwide U.S. strike wave that has seen hundreds of thousands of autoworkers, screenwriters, actors, hotel workers, baristas, and others walk off the job to win better wages and benefits could soon get even bigger, as tens of thousands of flight attendants and Kaiser Permanente employees prepare to take action amid stalled contract talks.
"We are not alone," the Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA), which represents more than 26,000 American Airlines flight attendants, told its members in an update on contract negotiations earlier this week. "Our struggle is part of a larger struggle by working people standing up against corporate greed. Autoworkers are on strike against the Big Three, as are actors and screenwriters."
Late last month, APFA members voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike if management stands by a contract proposal that the union criticized as inadequate.
More than 6,500 Alaska Airlines flight attendants represented by the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA are also threatening walkouts as they push for substantial wage increases. The flight attendants have been working under the same contract since 2014.
Flight attendants with Southwest and United Airlines are also fighting for new contracts.
Meanwhile, the largest healthcare strike in U.S. history is looming as 85,000 Kaiser Permanente employees represented by the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions demand a new contract that addresses understaffing and insufficient pay. Their current contract expires on September 30.
In recent weeks, Kaiser Permanente workers in Colorado, Oregon, California, and the Washington, D.C. area have voted to authorize strikes.
"We will take action if Kaiser Permanente does not come to the bargaining table to properly address our priorities—including staffing, patient care, and a consistent national wage increase to reward and retain our healthcare workers," the Office and Professional Employees International Union Local 2 said in a statement earlier this week after 98% of its members voted to authorize a strike.
Caroline Lucas, the executive director of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, told The Washington Post that "we hope that there will be no work stoppage, that there will be no need to strike, and that we'll reach a resolution this week."
"But our workers are so burned out and so pushed to the brink that they’re ready to walk off for up to two weeks if that's what it takes to get a respectful contract," Lucas added.
Management of Kaiser Permanente—which reported roughly $3.3 billion in net income during the first half of 2023—and union negotiators are currently holding a two-day national bargaining session.
More than 50,000 Las Vegas hotel workers could also soon be joining the wave of labor action, with the Culinary and Bartenders Unions set to hold a strike authorization vote on September 26.
"The current wave of strikes isn't bad for America. It's good for America."
More than 350,000 workers have gone on strike across the U.S. this year in pursuit of higher wages, improved benefits, and better working conditions that reflect the surging profits of their employers. Recent data from the U.S. Labor Department showed that 4.1 million days of work were lost nationwide last month due to strikes—the highest monthly total in more than two decades.
Last week, nearly 13,000 autoworkers walked out at three General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis facilities as the profitable companies refused to meet the United Auto Workers' demands, which
include a 36% wage increase, an end to tiered compensation structures, and improved pension and healthcare benefits.
On Friday, the UAW is expected to announce strikes at additional locations as it ramps up pressure on the automakers, and the union's president has stressed that an all-out strike involving around 150,000 autoworkers remains an option.
With the UAW strike just beginning, it appears as if the monthslong writer and actor strike could be moving toward a conclusion.
CNBC reported that writers represented by the Writers Guild of America and Hollywood producers are "near an agreement" following a bargaining session on Wednesday.
"If a deal is not reached," the outlet noted, "the strike could last through the end of the year."
In a column for The Guardian earlier this week, former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich argued that "the current wave of strikes isn't bad for America. It's good for America."
"American workers still have little to no countervailing power relative to large American corporations. Unionized workers now comprise only 6% of the private-sector workforce—down from over a third in the 1960s," Reich wrote. "Which is why the activism of the UAW, the Writers Guild, SAG-AFTRA, the Teamsters, flight attendants, Amazon warehouse workers, and Starbucks workers is so important."
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