jay honeck

Okay, so the Bush Administration says it wants to privatize ATC services,
apparently saving the taxpayers millions (billions?) of dollars.

The controllers say "No way!", claiming that putting ATC into the hands of
private businesses will jeopardize air safety, etc.

G.A. pilots say "No way!" because the Gubmint will want to start charging
"User's fees" to those of us who fly, making an already costly activity
prohibitively expensive.

So what's the solution here? Obviously something is wacky with current
costs if privatizing a SINGLE control tower (Vandenberg AFB, in California)
can save over $500,000.00 in a 3-year period! If this is true, why can't
the current controllers sit down with management and find ways to save that
kind of money, thus defusing the issue?

It seems to me the numbers here are just too huge. Somebody is not telling
the whole truth...
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
http://www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

edr

Like an Oreo, the truth lies in the stuffing.
What we are looking at is "political payoff".
Best example is to look what has happened to the military. Over 50% of
the support services have been privatized to campaign contributors.
Business who have outsourced their services have been badly burned by
brain-drain (loss of key employees knowledge) and spiraling contract
costs resulting in reduced services. New management comes in and
repeats the process. It's a revolving door.
When you retain your own employees, you retain the flexibility to
control your costs and your business.

bob noel

civil service, union, Congress

It's similar to any out-sourcing investigation.

--
Bob Noel

david reinhart

In case you hadn't heard, the administration has just this week declared
inspection of shrimp to be an "inherently governmental function". Inspecting
shellfish, yes. Controlling air traffic, no. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Dave Reinhart
wa6ilt@NOamsat.org

gerry caron

In this case I expect it's a case of Air Force unique issues and Air Force
accounting.

Having spent 5 years at VAFB, I can say that tower duty there would be
pretty boring for an AF controller. There were about a half dozen helos and
an aero club for based a/c. Most of the traffic I saw out there was
transient training a/c (BUFFs, P-3s, tankers, etc.) that came in, did a few
low approaches and split. The field (and tower) were only open 7 am to 5
pm.

The problem is that an AF controller is critically manned (always) and
controllers have to be proficient at all aspects of their job. They can be
mobilized and deployed anywhere on short notice and have to fill in at
approach control, tac air control or any number of jobs. All that requires
constant training. If he can't get the training locally, it means routine
TDY for training. That means extra expense and extra staff to handle the
work while everyone rotates thru training. Just being a tower controller at
a field is not an option.

The part about being critically manned means that the controllers are going
to be moving a lot. It's a domino effect of filling vacancies and adjusting
experience mixes at bases world wide.

The accounting is that the AF will include all those costs of training,
retraining, personnel moves, etc., as part of the costs.

So contracting out the work where there will be 4 or 5 controllers who can
be nothing more than tower controllers with presumably much less turnover is
likely to save a bundle.

On top of that, $500K over 3 years equates to approximately the cost of 1
full time professional (as in highly skilled) employee with all benefits and
overhead thrown in.

Gerry

g.r. patterson iii

In major businesses (like AT&T, IBM, etc.), the cost of an employee is roughly
three times his or her salary. Costs include office space, pension, health
care, and a portion of the salaries of the people that make out paychecks and
W-2s. It all adds up.

George Patterson
They say that nothing's certain except death and taxes. The thing is,
death doesn't get worse every time Congress goes into session.
Will Rogers

gerry caron

Been dealing with labor rates for 25+ years -- Air Force, gov't contractors,
big companies, medium companies. Most places, the cost of an employee is
about 3 times their salary. It's pretty consistent. Even in a small
business with no benefits, an employee will cost 1 1/2 to 2 times salary.

With those overhead rates, that $500K would pay for one person earning about
$55K/yr. Not an unreasonable number for an AF or civil service controller.

bob noel

most of the loaded rates I see have the cost of an employee
to be about twice their salary. But 2x, 3x, too bad the employee
can't see it. :-/

--
Bob Noel

gerry caron

Every company that has a pension plan.

If they offer a 401k and make matching contributions, those are pension
payments.

If they have a defined benefit plan, it has to be funded to cover future
liabilities of the plan. Do a search on "ERISA"

Today's WSJ had a really good article on the subject. A short read explains
why these plans are falling out of favor.

mc

The actual cost of any employee is their salary/wages plus (benefits if any)
plus a share of the overheads that are required to keep that employee, (eg
offices/buildings, support-staff, utilities, etc, etc, etc)

Depending upon the industry, the real cost of an employee to an organisation
is somewhere between 2 and 4 times what the employee is paid.