FAA Official Resigns, Citing NATCA Labor Relations

David Feder, FAA's director of labor and employee relations, has resigned after just six months on the job, and according to Fox News, he said he was leaving because FAA leadership was ignoring the law "in order to appease NATCA." In his resignation letter, which is posted on the Fox Business Network site, Feder says he is leaving because of "a wide difference of opinion with the FAA leadership over how to conduct labor relations with NATCA." Feder says it's his belief that the FAA must bring the new 2016 NATCA contract "into full compliance" with the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations statute. "The FAA political and career leadership disagrees … in order to appease NATCA and to avoid NATCA opposition to FAA initiatives," he wrote.

NATCA spokesman Doug Church told AVweb,"We don't have enough information on this matter to comment."An email from AVweb to the FAA media staff got no response by our deadline. "After 27 years of prosecuting Federal agencies and unions for violating the Statute and after 13 years of advising Federal agencies on how to comply with the Statute, I was not going to be complicit in intentionally acting inconsistent with that same Statute," Feder wrote. "Hence, I had no choice but to resign." The letter also was posted on fedsmith.com, a blog about federal workforce issues.