National Association of Air Traffic Specialists

Aviation Safety is Our Business

Bulletin #8

From

Don McLennan

The primary purpose of pay bands is to treat people fairly. A pay band identifies high and low levels of pay for a particular occupation. This is usually determined through a market analysis. The Agency believes that to treat people fairly, those doing less work should receive less pay. In private enterprise it is normal to have three different skill levels (e.g. senior, intermediate and junior). NAATS’ has different skill levels (academy, developmental and journeyperson), but the question is do we want to have more than a singular FPL status? We could decide that we want someone to serve at a lower band of pay the first three years they are a journeyperson, for example, then progress to the higher level status. Probably the negative response to this would be that once a person is facility rated they should receive "full" controller pay and we should not create some sort of "B scale" pay system. Also, would this be creating two levels of experienced controllers that could possibly put the Agency at risk if there were to be a post accident question of competency (that is, a legal issue)? Is this newer person really as competent as a more experienced controller is? A major issue is, what do you use as reasonable criteria (to be determined) to decide when and how to increase someone’s pay to the level of the more experienced controller? What kind of developmental opportunities are there for our people to become better controllers instead of preparing them to go into a management position? We will take this issue up before we close out our meetings.

In private enterprise pay raises (increases to pay) are given to insure that the most competent employees have competitive pay levels and valuable employees are not lost to the competition. Smaller and smaller numbers of employers are getting cost-of-living increases. Fortunately, cost-of-living increases are also more likely seen in a unionized environment than in a non-union environment. Companies spend a great deal of time on how they spend their money. Is it to be spent on across the board increases, or performance, or positions within a range (WIG)? What drives pay increases in the private sector depends on what other companies are doing. In government it depends on what other government agencies are doing. Why do companies pay differently within a single band? The market value of a job, based on surveys, can determine an average of what salaries are; junior as well as seasoned senior employees will be on either side of that figure. This is, in essence, how a pay band is formed. We will build on these discussions, but I am sharing with you those issues, concepts and decisions necessary to develop in the future to design and implement a new pay system that will meet our needs.

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Walter W. Pike, President

This page was last updated on 26 June, 2000