The president of the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists (PASS) employee union decried employee layoffs at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as “dangerous,” and broke down in an interview with MeriTalk how the job cuts impact technology and safety-related positions.
Dave Spero, president of PASS, said the Trump administration terminated 133 probationary FAA employees – those who have been working at the agency for less than two years – represented by the union since. Feb. 14.
He estimated that “about 400” employees were fired in total but clarified that PASS does not yet have firsthand access to information about terminations of employees that the union does not represent.
“I worked 34 years with the FAA, and I never saw anything even remotely close to this,” Spero said of the firings.
PASS provided MeriTalk with a breakdown of services within the FAA from which the 133 probationary employees were fired. The breakdown includes 59 employees fired from technical operations, 19 fired from mission support services, 15 fired from air traffic services, and 39 fired from flight standards services, according to PASS.
Spero said the administration targeted these employees as “low hanging fruit” because the government does not have to go through the same appeals processes to fire probationary employees.
The administration fired employees represented by PASS in positions ranging from aeronautical information specialists, maintenance mechanics, aviation safety assistants, and environmental protection specialists.
Spero said those firings disrupt the many layers of safety protocols within the FAA.
The Department of Transportation said the agency retained all employees who perform “safety critical” functions, but Spero disagreed. He said these firings complicate the FAA’s work as they have dealt with staffing problems for “a long time now.”
“This seems to erode and maybe start to destroy the aviation ecosystem,” Spero said. “We need all of these people to be able to perform any of the frontline safety functions that we perform,” he added.
Many of these positions assist in air traffic operations, according to PASS. Aeronautical information specialists assist with “evaluation, selection, and preparation of navigation maps, routes, charts, procedures, and flight paths,” the union confirmed to MeriTalk.
“We’re not going to be able to provide some of the services that we want to provide at the end of the day,” Spero said. “Now these folks are out on the street, and some of this work winds up in the laps of other people,” he added.
A representative from PASS said the administration also fired employees from jobs that require “detailed knowledge” of operations pertaining to their roles.
“Any cut into this ecosystem that we have is dangerous,” Spero said. “They [the administration] have to continue to consider every aspect of everything they do when it comes to aviation safety,” he added.
The firings also eliminated several employees in positions as environmental protection specialists which “manage, supervise, or perform administrative or program work relating to environmental protection programs.”
Spero said he is concerned that these firings will negatively impact the FAA by shifting employees’ attention to other directions rather than focusing on the “frontline” of safety. He also said he is concerned that these firings will make future recruitment of FAA employees more difficult due to a perceived lack of stability in the organization.
“If these positions don’t exist then controllers, aviation safety inspectors, and technicians would have to perform all of these duties and this would distract from other responsibilities that may be considered more directly related to safety of the flying public,” an email from PASS said.
Moving forward, Spero said PASS is working to reinstate all employees that were fired in the last several days. He said the agency will pay special attention to what impact the terminations have in the FAA if positions are not reinstated.
“We’re going to redouble our efforts, overlooking what the agency does from a safety perspective, and be hyper critical of any issues that go awry, especially if they were to result from some of these positions not being replaced,” Spero said.
