Air traffic controllers received their first zero-dollar paystubs on Tuesday.
Local air traffic controllers gathered at Boston Logan International Airport as part of a nationwide campaign to raise awareness about the impacts of the federal government shutdown on their professional and personal lives.
About a half dozen members of the New England chapter of the National Air Traffic Controllers union handed out leaflets Tuesday morning at the departure level of Terminal B.
Alyssa Nena, who’s been with the union for 11 years, spoke with passengers as they entered the terminal. She said this is the second time her pay has been affected by a government shutdown; she also went without pay during a shutdown in the first Trump administration that started in December 2018 and lasted 34 days.
Nena said she works at the Hanscom Airforce base tower in Lincoln, and her husband works at Logan airport. Both of them are not being paid during the shutdown.
“With two young kids and both of us being controllers, it’s really hard,” Nena said.
She said she and her husband have “talked to all our lenders and tried to defer our mortgage” while the government remains closed and are “hanging in there the best we can — just showing up, doing our job and trying to put the distractions out of mind.”
The union’s New England vice president, Kevin Curtiss, said the industry is short approximately 3,800 air traffic controllers to be “fully staffed.” The shutdown is putting “the burden of financial uncertainty” on a workforce that’s enduring “10 hours a day, up to 60 hours a week, on a job that requires you to be rested and and to check your emotions and things like that at the door, and to focus 100% on safety.”
Curtiss said the air traffic controllers’ commitment to safety keeps them coming in to work despite not being paid. But, he said, “it’s tough to keep morale up” when people are under financial stress.
Curtiss said the air traffic controllers gathering at Logan Tuesday were using their one day off to alert the public about the impacts of the government shutdown and to encourage travelers to urge their congressional representatives to reopen the federal government.
Similar union initiatives were held at airports in Washington D.C., Philadelphia and New York. U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy spoke at LaGuardia Airport in New York City on Tuesday and said while he encourages all air traffic controllers to continue showing up to work, he acknowledges the financial strain the shutdown has on workers.
“This is day one. Day two gets harder and day three gets harder after that as expenses continue to roll,” Duffy said. He went on to say, “Controllers and those other critical employees need our government to be open, and they need to be paid.”
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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