Air Traffic Controllers Are Resigning Due To Shutdown Stress, Union President Warns

Nick Daniels, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, said workers have gone too long without paychecks to work safely.

The head of the air traffic controllers union said Friday that some members were resigning from their jobs due to the stress inflicted by the government shutdown, worsening the already troubling staffing situation at airports.

“We’re seeing air traffic controllers resign,” Nick Daniels, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, told CNN.

“We didn’t see that in 2019,” Daniels went on. “We are 400 less controllers today than we were in the 2019 shutdown. And now they’ve been stretched so thin for so long, with so much going on, so much pressure on their backs, that they’re actually resigning from the profession.”

Daniels added that ending the shutdown is “not just about coming back to work — it’s about keeping the very ones that we have.”

The government has been shut down for 37 days, leaving federal employees with no sign of when they’ll be paid. Democrats, who have enough seats in the Senate to filibuster a spending bill, are insisting that any deal includes an extension of federal subsidies for people who get their health care through the Affordable Care Act. President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans have not relented.