>> pledging not to return until the government raise their pay, shortened workweek, took other measures, to reduce the stress of their jobs. the walkout was more than a new story.

the strikers were members of the professional air traffic controllers organization, patco, taking that grown out of the persistent efforts of transit and other veterans to organize in the aftermath of the 1960s disaster. it took several years and some effort to build that union, maher was its cofounder. he gave it its name. in 1981 he was no longer formally connected to patco having resigned from its staff in a squabble with its president a year earlier. he had decided then to move south to confront his alcoholism, but in truth, maher's heart was do with the union he had helped to found. during the summer of 1981 he had closely followed its contract talks with the administration, with president ronald reagan. the announcement that negotiations have broken down and patco was striking did not surprise him. he knew in 1981 contract

negotiation would be difficult. the union had prepared for three years for this moment and decided long before that if the government did not address its demands it would organize something unprecedented your a coordinated national strike. maher has led the effort to design that strike plan. he had recruited and trained the key strike organizers. he understood every aspect of the union's strike strategy. he knew that if patco was calling a strike, its leaders believe they were in a position to shut down the nation's air traffic. as maher digested the news and reflected on the 20 years of struggle that had led to this moment, his thoughts turned to his longtime friend and partner in the founding of patco, mike brock, another veteran of henry

levin. maher knew exactly where rock would be at that moment. in a union strike at core, a secret safe house, the bunker. maher himself had taken out on a rundown street near the capitol in washington. from that location, brock was helping to direct something never before seen, a carefully planned illegal strike stretching from puerto rico to guam, from key west to a great against the most powerful government in the world. maher result at the moment he had to go to washington. he was determined to stand in solidarity with the brock and his friends. jumping in his car, back to i-95 and headed north. as the miles rolled by the carburetor carried frequent bulletins of the walkout,

announcers reported the scheduled flights had been cut in half that morning and a skeleton crew of non-strikers, supervisors and hastily deployed no to air traffic controllers were scrambling to handle the remaining flights. trains and bus depots were swamped with worried travelers. they were offering stagnant predictions of the strikes potential cost as it continued for more than a few days. it seemed to maher that the plan was working. there was no way the government could refuse to improve its contract offer in the face of this strike, he thought. and his optimism was not diminished by the last broadcast of president reagan's statement from the white house rose garden at 11 a.m. reagan announced to the assembled press corps and millions watching on television that his administration would not negotiate with controllers

engaged in an illegal strike. if the strikers fail to return to work within 48 hours, he exclaimed, they would be terminated from their jobs and permanently replaced. what lesser action can there be, reagan asked, the law is very explicit. they are violating the law. maher thought reagan was talking tough for the cameras while behind the scenes negotiators were probably discussing details of a possible settlement at that very moment. that was how that goes previous, albeit smaller scale confrontation with the federal government had gone, maher remember. there was no reason to believe that the padded would not be repeated now with three quarters of the nation's air traffic controllers out on strike. maher was sure that reagan would not fire more than 10,000

skilled specialists that the government had spent hundreds of millions of dollars, and many years, to train. not when you're seeking only improved working conditions and fair compensation after years of seeing salaries lag behind inflation. not when dismissing them would ultimately cost more than meeting their demands. yet, as maher sped toward washington, the ironies of the situation in which his friends and former colleagues found themselves were obvious. air traffic controllers who loves their work as much as they hated the faa's management style, complained about government pay scales and griped about their stressful workplaces. on this hot august morning, thousands of them were risking their careers they had hoped would guarantee them a middle-class lifestyle. although they were breaking

federal law in an unprecedented effort to shut down the nation's air travel, they were hardly radicals. on the contrary, the vast majority of them were military veterans who, like maher, had first learned air traffic control while in the service. the strikes steel coordinator handpicked by maher was a decorated vietnam war he wrote. most of the thousands of vietnam era veterans in the unions ranks had not been drafted into the service. they had willingly enlisted. after their discharge they had applied for jobs at the faa because they found the work better paying than there better options because it was exciting, because it offered them something unavailable to americans who lack college degrees, as most controllers there. chance to become professionals. they were striking out because they felt that they had to protect their profession from the degradation of diminished

real earnings and increased stress. i don't even think air traffic controllers should have the right to strike, explained the 33 old strike leader at the faa's huge air route traffic control center outside washington. we are striking against the federal government now because, for 10 years, we have exhausted every means at our disposal with the government. at this point we have been forced to strike. a marine veteran, one of the plays firefights of the vietnam war, stake him was not intimidated by the presence ultimatum. i'm standing up for something i believe in, and i'm not about to fold, he added. as jack maher welna, strikers like stakum meant what they said.

maher found the irony of the situation almost too excruciating to complicate -- ronald reagan, past president of the screen actors guild, the only former union official ever to occupy the oval office, a man whose election patco had endorsed only nine months earlier containing good people like stakum as lawbreakers and threatening them with dismissal? perhaps even jail. but in many ways it was not surprising that the air traffic controllers and reagan found themselves in a showdown on august 31981 -- august 3, 1981. both reagan and patco were in many respects products of the 1960s, although disparate products to be sure. the seeds of reagan's political career and patco's formation in

fact were both known during the presidency of john f. kennedy. and a new deal liberals in the days when he led the screen actors guild after world war ii, ronald reagan gradually drifted rightward in the 1950s as his movie career faded, but he remained nominally a democrat until the kennedy administration's policies convinced him to leave the party of his youth. kennedy's liberalism upholds reagan. writing to richard nixon, the man kennedy had defeated, in the 1960 election, reagan lashed out to the sitting president and his policy but under the tussled boyish haircut, the steel old karl marx, regular, first launched a century ago, there is nothing new in the idea of a government being big brother to us all. switching his registration to the republican party in 1962,

reagan began to map out the political career that would eventually carry him to the white house. the same year that reagan switched parties, kennedy signed executive order 10988, which allowed millions of federal workers to join unions and to bargain with the u.s. government over some of the conditions of their work. kennedy's order inspired me states and localities to also allow their workers to join unions and bargain collectively, prompting a massive wave of unionization across all levels of government in the 1960s and '70s. it was the kennedy or that cleared the way for a union organizing drive among air traffic controllers. among them, maher and is cofounder of patco, mike rock. and organizing drive that would

culminate in the founding of patco in 1968 in a hotel room only 10 miles from the site of the midair collision that had started the organizing eight years earlier. both the conservative movement with which reagan was identified and the public sector labor movement that produced unions like patco gather strength as the 1960s gave way to the 1970s. in a sense, these 260s spawned forces had been on a collision course for years it at august august 3, 1981, the day of reckoning has arrived. the confrontation came at a crucial moment in american political and economic history, as the reagan revolution began refashioning the role of government in american life in 1981, cutting back regulation

and spending on social program, american workers were entering a period of enormous vulnerability. already the economy was sliding into a recession that would push unemployment to 10% in 1982, its highest level since before world war ii. income growth had stagnated for most workers, indeed inflation adjusted hourly pay had begun to decline, formerly vibrant sectors like manufacturing. moreover, the labor movement once the bulwark of the liberal order seemed unable to resist these political and economic trends. big unions have been severely weakened by the economic development from the '70s as container ships began discouraging imports and both american waterfronts as oil prices skyrocketed, as stagflation appeared, as factories closed in ways, and as employers begin fighting unions

with a level of determination unseen since the new deal. as the share of workers organize and unions clip under 22% in 1981, down from its high from 35% after world war ii, the labor movement was already losing clout your one indicator of the ship, little noticed at the time, was a subtle change in strike activity. a careful study of statistics show that employers were more likely to try to break strikes after 1975, than they had been for the first 30 years after world war ii. increased employer resistance was already beginning to have an effect. by the spring of 1981. the annual number of work stoppages or strikes recorded by the bureau of labor statistics fell by 20% in 1980. it seemed that workers

confidence in their ability to win strikes was wavering. just as the controllers walkout began. at this most significant strike of the late 20th century was unfolding in the public sector, among government workers was it so ironic. the rise of public employee unions in the years after kennedy's order in 1962 have been one of the happiest developments for organized labor since the new deal. thoroughgoing numbers of unionized government workers like air traffic controllers had partially offset the falling rate of private sector unionization. but on august 3 the table suddenly turn. the public sector union movement that had been buoyed labor's fortune for nearly two decades was not the source of a potentially devastating blow, and illegal and unpopular strike by patco's federal employees erupting just as employers of

resistance to strikes is rising across the border, threatening to place all of organized labor on the defensive. yet jack maher was not primarily concerned with the political implications, or the historic significance of the patco strike, as he drove toward washington. his thoughts were of his friends and former colleagues. the procedure when one air traffic control replaced another during a shift change called for the incoming controller to plug in his headset, closely study the blizzard of moving blips or targets moving across the radar screen and listen to the on duty controller issuing commands until he was sure that he had absorbed all the details and understood the flow of the traffic in that sector he was about to take over, only when the controller coming on duty was sure the first controller that he had the picture, with

the first controller unplugged and clock out. as he arrived in washington late in the day on august 3, from his long drive, maher's first instinct was to get the picture. so he rushed to patco's strike at gore on north capitol street, pumping everyone he saw for information. when maher learned that patco president was out of the office he assumed that he was in secret negotiations with the reagan people. but no one maher buttonholed that he was aware of any negotiations under way. as far as anyone in the patco office knew, the white house was refusing to talk while the controllers remained on strike. the one bit of news maher did pick up he judged to be insignificant, a rumor that some former secretaries of labor were offering to mediate the conflict. when the person who share this with him sworn to secrecy about

it, maher began to worry. if that rumor was the best patco had, then the situation was worse than he anticipated. there might be no back channel negotiations undertaken before reagan's 48 hour deadline passed. yet as maher left patco's headquarters he still believed that as long as the strikers ranks held, the union would prevail. the next morning he decided to get the views of his longtime collaborator, mike rock, who is still in sconce at patco's secret safe house a mile from the capital. as maher blinded his way to the secret location he thought about the many gmc and rock have found themselves in over the years since they've helped bring patco to birth in 1968. it had never been an easy proposition organizing a strong union and the federal sector. and rules that made it illegal

not only to strike, but also to negotiate over pay or benefits. maher and rock had pushed the legal envelope many times before and threatened repeatedly with firing or worse. but they had never faced a situation quite as serious as this one. if anyone had the nerve to steer the union to victory, maher thought, it was shortly rock. like a strike as the patco members jokingly called him. yet when mike rock opened the safe house door, maher's confidence was not inspired by the sight of his friend. rock looked worried. this was unlike him. in past battles with the government, rock had exited a cocky confidence. on this day, maher found his friend uncharacteristically subdued. thinking that rock might only be tired and hoping to pick up his pals spirits, maher recounted the news he cleaned at the

headquarters the night before, including the rumor about potential mediators but isn't it the seal is damn thing? this a whole swearing me to secrecy over the offer of a committee? maher chuckle. but rock could not share the laugh. instead, he delivered his own grim diagnosis. reagan was determined to break the strike, rock said. and when a president takes a stand like that, no union could force him to back down. then turning to the man who had helped him found patco, rock said, little jackie, we got to the end of the road. it's all over now. maher was incredulous. might strike ready to throw in the towel? only one day for the walkout. all was not lost he insisted.

patco still held high cost of the reminded rock of the logic behind the union strike strategy that the government would be forced to come to terms with the strikers, maher argued, no matter what the president said. reagan could not fire three quarters of the air traffic control force and how to operate in air transportation system for long. americans would never tolerate pain many billions more to break the strike than it would cost to me contract, patco's contract demands. training 10,000 new recruits and reducing flight schedules for years to come would be a price too high for the government to pay. but rock disagreed. now that patco was on strike, he countered, reagan would welcome the chance to demonstrate that his administration would pay any price rather than yield to pressure from the union. try as he might, maher could not

convince him otherwise. when they visit came to an end, maher left this safe house hoping that rock was wrong. situation couldn't have been more unnerving for jack maher. with a deadline fast approaching what was already shaping up to be the most momentous american strike of the second half of the 20th century, the man whose judgment maher most trusted believed that the union that they had founded together was about to be broken and destroyed. making matters worse, maher realize that it might already be too late for patco to change course. it was doubtful that controllers would heed a last minute back to work or from the union's national leaders, unless it was accompanied by a new contract offer from the government. the strikers had assumed all along that the government might try to dismiss them before ultimately compromising.

indeed, this assumption was built into the strike plan the maher had helped to conceive. organizers had prepared the union's members in advance for this thread but it also explained that if the strikers stuck together they would make it impossible for the government to carry through in a mass firing. but as the deadline approached, patco's ranks were holding firm. like jim stake in of northern virginia, a traffic controllers were standing up for something in which they passionately believed and were not about to fold. instantly the patco's reagan stand off as soon that aspect of the tragedy unfolding with each tick of the clock. with the presence deadline only 24 hours away, a collision now seems inevitable. that collision not only threatened disaster for striking air traffic controllers, it also has the potential to undermine

the long-term integrity of the air traffic control system, loosen moral restraint that it kept private sector in the unionism in check. and exposed glaring flaws of the american system of labor relations before tens of millions of workers whose income and dignity depended upon its presumed protections. workers would never boarded an airplane, let alone seen the inside of a control tower. it was an air traffic controller's worst nightmare. the sickening scenario that had haughton maher's dreams ever since that grim december morning in 1960. two targets were converging on the screen. each sweep of the radar saw them draw closer to a collision. but it was too late to issue any new vectors. too late for course corrections.

all maher could give was watched helplessly as the targets came together, hoping that his friend was mistaken, praying that a disaster could be averted, and wondering how it had come to this. so this is how i opened the bo book. with the sense and the realization even at the moment that the strike was still in its first 24 hours, that it portended possible disaster. not only for maher and his friends, but for the country in many ways. in the pages that follow i explained how that moment came about, and how that moment changed this country, and i believe it did. the story picks up in the aftermath of the 1960 disaster. it traces air traffic

controllers efforts to organize a union in the 1960s. it explains how they're both simultaneously inspired and frustrated by john f. kennedy's executive order, which gave them the promise of bargaining with the government but so restricted what they could bargain about, that it barely changed anything, they felt. and it explain the resistance by the faa to any organization of controller that was there from the very beginning in the early 1960s, a resistance that said in place a dynamic of conflict between air traffic controllers and their employer, that build over time that ultimately led to the 1981 strike. the book goes on to show how the controllers adopted in genius method to build an organization despite becomes resistance in the '60s. how they enlisted a famous trial lawyer, f. lee bailey, to help them organize their union.

how they use a variety of tactics slow downs, work the rule actions, sickos, one of which by the way was signaled by a code phrase uttered by daisy when he was appearing on johnny carson's late-night show, the tonight show. how they use tactics like these to try to pressure the government to listen to them. it shows how they stay the first air traffic control strike in 1970 under the guise of a sickout under the cover of a sickout, they called in sick for three weeks, about 3000 or traffic controllers that tried to get the government to listen to some of their concerns. it shows how in the aftermath of the conflict they cut a secret deal with the nixon administration that afforded controllers losing their jobs permanently for basically striking against the government in 1970, and, in fact, even one

recognition for patco within a couple of years of that job action. it showed how the union grew over the course of the 1970s under a pretty remarkable union leader named john ladin was able to balance various factions within the union and to protect just enough militancy to try to get the government to respond to patco's concerns without endangering the union. but the book goes on to show how over the course of the 1970s the controllers efforts to have their voices heard became increasingly frustrated for them. and they found themselves unable to negotiate over the things that mattered most to them. they were forced to fight over ancillary issues like free training flights and enemy while the faa continued to resist most

other eight efforts to win reform. it was during the carter years and i did important parts of the research for this book here in the carter library, it was in the carter years the book argues that things really begin to get very difficult for patco. and patco began to lurch toward the conflict that ultimately happened under reagan in 81. patco found itself caught between restricted federal collective bargaining rules, on the one hand, and the social economic and political changes that were underway in america in 1970s on the other. all this served to weaken the grip of john ladin on the leadership of the union. controllers saw their dreams of using their skills to become upwardly mobile professionals challenge in the mid '70s,

inflation which nipped at the heels of federal workers. in effect federal workers as a whole were suffering a 3% wage cut in real purchasing power for their wages over the course of the middle part of the 1970s. most federal workers didn't feel that they could do much about that, but mutter under their breath. air traffic controllers, however, got the idea that they could challenge that, and they could try to win back through their militancy wages and inflation was taking from them. the book described how the deregulation of airlines in the 1970s created a situation that complicated air traffic controller made many x. traffic controllers feel that the work was being sped up and becoming harder to and it recounts also the way that the air traffic controller workforce changed over the course of the 1970s

as african-americans and women begin to diversify that workforce that had once been predominately white male, though very slowly and with resistance often did this diversification take place. and have the union was changed by the culture of controllers who came into the ranks of air traffic control facilities in the mid 1970s, who were affected by the 1960s and especially by the vietnam era, the vietnam conflict. many controllers, more than 80%, came out of the military. many of them were disillusioned already with the government because of vietnam and what they experience to bear, and what they saw the faa deepened their dissolution. amid all these changes sentiment began to build among controllers, i show. that they could win for themselves if they stuck together we'll changes in their

workplaces. that they could force the government to do something that it had never done before, fully recognize the collective bargaining rights of workers. that is, allow air traffic controllers to bargain over their wages and benefits and other parts of their job. they came to believe that they could win it. it was at precisely this moment that ronald reagan entered their lives and entered the picture. as their determination to improve their situation grew, then came the election between jimmy carter and ronald reagan. by this point the controllers were so disaffected with the carter administration's faa that they didn't consider really endorsing carter's reelection. they thought it would be more of the same. they begin negotiating with reagan's campaign, and

ultimately arrived at an agreement. they would endorse reagan, and then returned reagan would promise to help them if he was elected president. the book goes deeply into this, and i'll be happy to answer more questions about it if you have them, but out of simply say that that bargain created expectations on each side that were unrealistic and couldn't be fulfilled, and each side misread the other. the reagan people believed that they were bringing in to the republican fold the reagan democrats. most patco members were democrats though they endorsed reagan. but they were socially conservative very often, and they were sympathetic to much of what reagan stood for in a strong foreign policy, et cetera. republicans thought they were bringing in part of the labor movement behind the reagan coalition. once elected they wanted to work

with patco, to offer patco a contract that they felt would reward patco for the enforcement, and also signal to other unions that more conservative union members that aligning with ronald reagan would be good for you. and actually in the negotiations that broke them that summit in 1981, the reagan administration went further than any previous administration had gone in trying to offer the controllers something. they actually did bark and with patco over what the law did not allow them to bargain over. wages, and benefits, primarily wages that they made an offer to patco that no previous administration had done. the problem was that by that point that offer was so small compared to what the controllers believed that they would get. and their expectations were quite different that they ended up rejecting the offer.

controllers look at reagan and they thought this man will help us really fundamentally change the system that still bothers us. and having broken with the rest of organized labor to endorse him, they expected a big breakthrough at the bargaining table and he was disappointed by what reagan offered. and then they misread reagan as well. they saw his willingness to go pepfar as evidence that if they pushed him a little further they could get more from him. and they determined to do it. they would shut down the nation's air transit system. and so came to pass the moment whose -- with less than 24 hours less before reagan's deadline, and the cold war context of that moment insured that it would do maximum damage to these controllers. having publicly set a 48 hour

deadline on national television, ronald reagan was not inclined to waiver, lest you send signals that he was not a resolute leader. for the same reason he later rejected all pleas for mercy in rehiring of controllers, even those come from other republicans like jack can't represent a future vice president candidate for the republican party. jack kemp supported reagan's ultimatum on august 3, but after months passed it was clear the strike had been broken, jack kemp played with reagan and said, you know mr. president, you have one. we hire these people, or at least most of them. save the country money, improve air safety and show mercy to it will be good. but reagan was not interested. in many ways, the more expensive, the more dangerous is

busting a patco was, the more that act was bound to improve one audience that reagan was determined to impress, soviet leaders. and so came to pass that jack maher, so came to pass the moment that jack maher and so many others thought would never come, the mass firing of more than 11,000 skilled specialists and management not only from their jobs but from their careers. for there was no other employer, people of his training in the united states. in many ways i think we're still picking through the wreckage from that collision that occurred 30 years ago now. one of the last legacies of that fateful event, it turns out, was the rapid dissolution of all u.s. workers ability to use strikes as leverage in dealing with their employers.

when reagan came into the rose garden on the first morning at 11 to lay down his ultimatum, he was quick to distinguish the patco strike from strikes in the private sector. he steadfastly supported private sector workers right to strike, he said. indeed, he reminded the audience that he fled the screen actors guild on its first strike in 1952. but the distinction that reagan drew between patco's controllers and private sector workers was quickly blurred. once the president of the united states legitimized strike breaking by firing at kos strikers many private sectors employers followed suit. in 1980 so many prominent cases of strike breaking as a number busted strikes began to rise after 1981, workers grew afraid

to use strikes anymore. the u.s. had averaged about 270 major strikes. that is, strike that involved at least 1000 workers each, about 270 a year before 1980. after 1981, that number plummeted quickly. just two years ago it was five, from 270 down to five. and in 2009, the total number of workers in the united states that engage in a strike was about 12,000. roughly the number of people who walked out august 3, 1981 in 1 particularly infamous strike. workers no longer had the power to strike, and they do not in the united states today. no one likes strikes. but we may come to like a strike was world even less than a world in which workers feel that they

have that power, for there is no doubt that the erosion of workers ability, to pressure employers, even unreasonable ones, as their loss of the power accelerate the inequality that is now so rampant in this country. income inequality that now is approaching levels not seen in a century. i think there's one final legacy that i will touch on about the patco strike. just as reagan's decision to bust patco change patterns of private sector of labor relations, it also forged new political patterns, i think, in this country. remember, ronald reagan into political office seeking the support of a union, seeking its endorsement, patco. but he left office largely giving up on the prospect of a republican labor alliance.

nor did any republican successors to reagan show much interest in reaching out to the labor movement. in fact, reagan's act of strike breaking helped inspire a new generation of conservatives far more antiunion than reagan, the former union leader, have ever been. we see evidence i think all around us today. last spring, for example, when governor scott walker in wisconsin prepared to roll back collective bargaining rights in his state, he pointed to reagan's breaking of patco as inspiration. never for a minute did walker consider that reagan, his hero, had never opposed collective bargaining for government workers. indeed, reagan had gone further than any previous president in his efforts to bargain with patco. he had only oppose strikes by federal workers, but by 2011

this no longer mattered. time had changed when it meant to be a concerted. conservatives now by and large oppose unions in any form. and as a result, partisan bickering now paralyzes all efforts to discuss, let alone pass, any effort to reform our outdated labor laws. i think in many ways what happened to patco 30 years ago helped lead us to the moment we are now in as a nation. it is not, i think, a good moment to be a worker in the united states. indeed it's not a good moment for america in many ways. the title of my book, the intent is meant to allude as much to this moment as to the one that came about in 1981. surveying the state of

working-class americans today, declining real wages, and inability to claim productivity gains that come from workers labor back to workers in the form of increased income, retirements growing increasingly insecure, workers too afraid to risk organizing unions. it's hard to escape the conclusion that we are on an unsustainable path as inequality grows, and that we're headed for a collision that could make the tragedy of 1981 pale in comparison. headed for a collision between the thwarted aspirations of today's workers and the grim realities that they are now facing and which the future seems to hold vast promise than the past for american workers,

and so by telling the story of a tragedy for this nation and workers in 1981, this book is also meant to serve as a warning. the warning that we take stock of our own moment, that we hear the cries of those for whom our system has ceased to work, the forgotten people who work out of sight, who is often struck by the fact that one of the real problem air traffic controllers faced is that nobody saw them do their work. you see your flight attendant. you see your pilot. and at the end of a flight the pilot is there and you can thank them, but the other people who got you there are invisible. and in many ways i think they are a metaphor for much of america today, who are invisible to us and who are suffering out of sight.

it's important i think that we think about this moment in light of the story that i have to tell. and that we think about the wisdom that comes in a proverb that i used to open this book, and that we heed that with the proverb goes like this, the beginning of strike is like the opening of a dam. therefore, federalist coral before us against. thank you very much. [applause] ..

>> so he fired the 15,000 to keep the 300,000-member postal union was he didn't want to lose them. >> that's a very interesting and important question. the summer of 1981 a lot of things were going on, and one of them was that postal workers were in the middle of negotiating a contract. now, the postal workers had tentatively agreed on a contract with the federal government before the air traffic controllers walked out, but they were voting on that contract by mail. and that vote would continue well into august. and the reagan administration was mindful of the fact that if it did cave in to, as it saw it,

controller demands in this strike, postal workers would immediately reject the contract that had been tentatively agreed to by their leaders, they would vote it down, and they would want whatever patco got and strike if it took it to get that. it was on the minds of the reagan people, but i would say this, that even more present in their minds was the idea that even if postal workers weren't out there threatening to have their own job action, they did not want the image of a president being forced to back down on an offer he had made by a union. and they were determined even if the postal workers weren't there that they weren't going to do that. but, still, that was, that was on people's minds nonetheless. it's a good question. yes. >> in 1978 president jimmy

carter signed the civil service reform act. >> that's right. >> the result of that was to make federal sector collective bargaining statutory. >> yes. >> and so my question is what, if any, impact that event had on the direction that patco was to go. >> that's a wonderful question, and i alluded earlier to the fact that collective bargaining rights first came to the federal government through an executive order by john kennedy. nixon just issued one that widened it somewhat. but it wasn't until 1978, as the questioner says, that this was written into a law passed by congress. federal workers had certain rights. i tell the story of the 1978 civil service reform act in my book, and i explain that it deeply disappointed air traffic controllers and some others in the federal government.

the treasury employees' union, for example. and both patco and the treasury employees' unions were two of the unions pushing hardest for one thing to be included in that bill. they wanted the right to negotiate over pay. and that bill did not give federal workers that right. they were, that was one reason why they were so disappointed with carter, because they believed that carter should have given them that right. and, in fact, it was after 1978, and they realized that no law would come in to give them the right to bargain, that they tarted to think -- started to think the only way they could get it was through militancy. they would accomplish by walking out what the congress had not given them in the 1978 bill. but your question is super, and it gets at one of the real cruxes of this story which is what happened in the carter years that many people in labor felt were so disappointing for people in labor.

not just public sector folks, but many in the labor movement. and that helped to fuel ted kennedy's challenge to carter, the abortive challenge in the primaries in 1980. but they were deeply disappointed with that bill. yeah. i'll wait until the mic gets to you. >> i'm wondering if you agree with my perception as a former federal employee that reagan really disliked federal government employees and thought them superfluous for the most part. i don't know what he thought about about the controllers. and you know the first thing he did when he left the dais being sworn in was to freeze federal employees, then he abolished the program i'd been working in, then he try today abolish two departments, including mine. and then in '34 he came -- '84 he came up with a retirement

system which was far inferior to what existed. so is my perception wrong? >> no, i don't think your perception is wrong. there is one thing we associate with ronald reagan, and i think it's accurate, he thought government was too big, and he thought there were too many federal workers, and he, he believed much more in private sector, of course, than he did in government. and i think that morale among federal workers plummeted in the early 1980s. you know, one of the best accounts of this that i've read is haines johnson's, the journalist's book, it's called sleepwalking through history, the history of the reagan years, he talks about the impact of reagan on federal workers. i don't think your perception is all that wrong. i would add, though, one thing;

that i think in history we've assumed reagan was more anti-union than, in fact, he really was, and partly, i think, that's partly what happened with the patco situation that colored him in history in that particular way. well, he thought government was too big, he never did oppose the idea of collective bargaining in government. in fact, you know, and this is something that many conservatives today would probably be surprised by. as governor of california he signed a bill, the meyers-brown act that brought collective bargaining to localities, government localities throughout the state. so that's an important thing to add to our perception of reagan. but i think your perception is right. >> bush was the one, bush ii, that really wanted to contract out everything he could. did he ever try to contract out -- >> reagan, reagan appointed some people here might recall the grace commission in the 1980s.

and the whole idea behind it was to bring private sector minds together to figure out how government could be done better. not surprisingly, a lot of those folks said, well, if you contract out this work, it'll actually be better. um, and it'll be more efficient, and it'll be cheaper. by the way, some recent studies have shown that contracting is actually more expensive. >>less effective. >> and often less effective. so i don't think historically those things have panned out, but that was a push in the reagan years, too, and it was widened, you're right, in the bush years. >> what do you think the future of the air traffic control profession is given the timeline from the early 1980 and retirements taking place recently? >> that's an excellent question, and it's one of the ways that

we're still, in fact, kind of in the shadow of what happened 30 years ago. because the loss of more than 10,000 people created a huge hole that had to be filled by a massive training program and rehiring in the years after the strike, and that set up a whole cohort of controllers who came into the work in the early '80s who were reaching retirement almost simultaneously in the past five or so years. and that quick turnover of senior controllers has, n., lowered the -- in fact, lowered the age of air traffic controllers in recent years, and from folks that i talk to that are still around air traffic control, it's made it harder because there are fewer senior controllers around, and anybody who knows air traffic control knows the only way you really

learn that work was to have senior controllers sitting with you and mentoring with you and going on their check rides with you as they were called. um, that's the way folks learn. and there are fewer of the seniors hands-on today due to the blip of the loss of so many suddenly in recent years. so i think that the impact is still there. to this day. >> i want to thank everyone. i think this was a fascinating topic tonight. and as joe said, it's one that still stays with us today, the implications of it. so, please, join me in thanking joe mccartin one more time. [applause] and if you'll join us in the lobby, joe's going to be signing copies of his book. thank you all very much. >> thank you. thank you, everybody. [inaudible conversations]

>> every weekend book tv offers 48 hours of programming focused on nonfiction authors and books. watch it here on c-span2. >> well, now on your screen on booktv is keni thomas, and he has written this book, "get it on: what it means to lead the way, a u.s. army ranger's veteran of blackhawk down mission." keni thomas, tell us about your connection with blackhawk down. >> i was part of the 75th ranger regiment, part of the guys that went in on that -- >> '94? >> 't -- '93. close though. it was initially a raid, and just like that, the course of our lives changed. so what i get from that is anybody that's going to make it out where others didn't, you're going to spend the rest of your life thanking the people on your right and left that you're here

today. whether i do it through music or in a book, i'm going to tell the story. >> keni thomas, walk us through that day. >> dude, there's been documentaries done on that, we could be here for hours. >> your experience. >> my experience was we came in on a mission, and everybody thought it was going to be normal. it was a little bit risky. what we didn't know was we would lose 18 guys, and of the 130 of us that went in, if you do the math, a ton of us got wounded. i'm telling you, those numbers would have been significantly higher had it not been for the level of the planning and training, but mostly the leadership at every level. and i mean from david floyd who was the one private who saves everybody all the way up to general garrison, it was leadership at every level that saved us, and we know that. by the time morning rolls around f be you know the story, we were there to help the pilot. we waited for the pilot so we could get his body out of the

wreckage, and in the morning the pakistanis came, the 10th mountain came, cooks put on body armor, and not a single one of those guys came in and said, it's not my job. they all volunteered. we put the wounded on trucks, and the rest of us ran out. when you make it out, you're going to spend your life thanking those folks. and it's an extraordinary story. as good as you've heard the story, nobody can tell us about david floyd and de jesus, row mall ya, sergeant watson not the way that i can, because those were my guys. >> when did you leave the rangers? >> i got out of the military in the '90s and picked up the guitar. this whole book thing's a new world for me. >> why are you writing this now n2011? >> that's a good question. i get a chance to tell that story to a ton of people, and the more people you can reach, i feel like the more chance you have to make a difference with

the message of leadership. and i started doing so many events, everybody's like why haven't you written this story down? so i, actually, it was ollie north, yeah, you really need to write this. and we wrote it, and it was as simple as somebody saying yes. and when b and h publishing was, like, we'd love to put it out, you went, really? and it was that simple. and now all of a sudden you have this book, we're in walmart. you know, now, something's happening. so it's been a heck of a ride. >> what is this about music and the guitar? >> i work in nashville. e do country music, so we have a whole audience on that side of the world. it's kind of a neat thing. you have all these fans that are coming in for music, and now you got new people that you're meeting at events like this for the book, and they're all coming to keni thomas, and they're all starting to figure out what the message is what, what is set an

example. you can do amazing things. >> who do you play with in country music? anybody -- >> name it. the only people i have not opened up for yet is faith hill and tim mcgraw, so if they're watching, you guys need to give me a slot. as the opening act, you get to see everybody that's been doing it for a while now. >> is it well known that you were an army ranger in your new career? >> it is. folks know what i did. and it effects the music every now and then. i feel like you have to entertain folks, especially on stage. and when you write a story. that's why people will -- that's how you get people, that's how you captivate them. you tell them a story. but at the end of it whether it's a guitar, microphone or book, you better have something to say. and, obviously, what i have to say is, lead the way. >> keni thomas is the author of this book, "get it on: what it means to lead the way." u.s. army rangers of blackhawk down