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 th