Air Traffic Controllers to sue FAA

A group of Air Traffic Controllers need your help in coming up with funding to file a lawsuit against the FAA for putting your flight safety at risk (or the flight safety of your relatives), due to disgruntled, cheated, Air Traffic Controllers who are having a hard time concentrating on the job due to anger and frustration, by cheating approximately 160 Air Traffic Controllers out of an average of $6,000 per year, a few as high as $15,000 per year, and then progressively worse after that as time went on, because subsequent raises were percentages of their already-ERRONEOUSLY-established pay, by UNNECESSARILY delaying our reassignment to higher-level facilities by 14 months, a 14-month delay in contracting out our control towers at small airports, where we moved to higher-level facilities and were replaced by contract controllers, and when we finally moved they failed to bring our pay up to the same level as other IDENTICAL employees who moved to that SAME facility in the first three years of the contracting-out program (only us in the fourth year of the contracting-out program were delayed in moving by 14 months).  If we had moved AS SCHEDULED, we would have been given the same raises as other IDENTICAL employees who moved in the first three years of the contracting-out program, and would have stayed at the same level of pay as them after that.   Failure to give us the correct pay raises, the same as other identical employees, caused an INCORRECT distribution of $200 million, where the money that should have gone to us delayed controllers was distributed to the other 14,982 controllers in the country (which includes the approximately 600 who were in the first three years of the contracting-out program), causing them to be OVERPAID by, on average, $2.46 per paycheck after the third year of the distribution, enough to buy two or three candy bars every two weeks. 

When I asked the Compensation Policy Manager, "What happens after the distribution of the $200 million"?, he replied, "Then it becomes the cost of doing business", so pay did not go back down after the distribution, therefore, the overpayments to the 14,982 have been continuous for the last 17 years and 3 months, causing the FAA to LOSE between $17 million and $18 million in overpayments of YOUR tax dollars during that time.  If not for retirements during the last 17 years and 3 months (over 10,000, the vast majority in the last few years), the loss to the FAA would have been between $20 million and $22 million.  There is no statute of limitation on recovery of overpayments to Federal employees (5514, Title 5, U.S.C.). 

However, most of the 160 delayed and cheated controllers were only cheated on a temporary basis, during the 14-month delay in contracting out, then while at medium-level facilities, until either retiring (but many are now being cheated out of the correct amount of retirement income), or LATER moving to an even higher-level facility, such as Chicago O'Hare, where they would be at the bottom of the new pay band after full qualification even if we had moved as originally scheduled from the Level One control towers, and are owed less than $6.5 million, which includes interest and the money to pay the 3 who are known to have resigned because they refuse to put the safety of the public at risk by having a hard time concentrating on the job due to anger over FAA management's incompetence, which resignations were, "constructive discharge", same as wrongful termination, as if they have worked at the correct level of pay since resignation.   Therefore, FAA management, with a COURT ORDER, can recover the $17 million loss during the next one year with deductions from the pay of the still-working ex-Title 5 controllers (those who have been working since BEFORE October, 1998, and who partook of the $200 million distribution) and retirees (with cooperation by OPM retirement payments personnel), pay out LESS than $6.5 million, with a NET RE-GAIN to the FAA of at least $10.5 million, which they could use to hire more Air Traffic Controllers (maybe even YOU or one of your friends or relatives) to increase the flight safety of the public, and to help the large number of retirements now occuring, as the majority of the controllers hired after the 1981 illegal strike (where President Reagan fired 11,000) are now reaching the mandatory retirement age of 56.  Thanks for any help in getting this threat to the flight safety of the public corrected.