Huerta Disagrees FAA Breaking Law

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FAA Administrator Michael Huerta says he doesn’t agree the FAA is acting illegally in its labor dealings with the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. Huerta was responding to allegations leveled by his former director of labor and employee relations that the agency knows it is illegally funding some parts of NATCA’s union operations. As we reported Wednesday, David Feder sent an email to his department saying he couldn’t “stay at the FAA and intentionally violate the law.” Feder resigned May 30. Huerta told a news conference at AirVenture 2015 that he had a different view of the way things work between NATCA and the FAA and he doesn’t want to go back the former adversarial way of doing business.

Huerta said the FAA has been able to get a lot accomplished recently because of collaboration and cooperation from its employees. “I think it’s irresponsible to say that you are breaking the law when what you are basically doing is considering negotiating things you may not be required to,” he said. “It is important to point out that we have everyone who wants us to, have a more collaborative relationship with the industry and a more collaborative relationship with the workforce and in doing that why would we want to adopt a very adversarial old-school sort of relationship?” NATCA has not responded in detail to the allegations and says it needs more information on them.

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