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| ISBN-13: | 9781504925419 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 08/31/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 322 |
| File size: | 651 KB |
About the Author
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CQ, CQ ... My Last Transmission
By Samantha Sims
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2015 Carrie DeleonAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5049-2542-6
CHAPTER 1
"Wow! I don't know where to begin?" the male FAA Special Agent said to his female FAA Special Agent partner as he sat at the end of the table with his arms framing the seven-page statement I was just sworn-in to sign. To gain clarification I asked him, "What do you mean?" The FAA Special Agent said, "I don't know where to begin my investigation, the EEOC system that completely failed you, union in bed with management, or the misuse of authority by management itself."
Three days after speaking with the FAA Special Agents my Washington assigned liaison called me as he was on his way to a meeting in Washington, DC about one of the many things I had brought to light and said, "Samantha, I am so sorry. We are finding out that you are not alone. We are finding out that what happened to you is ramped at all the facilities nationwide." My Washington assigned liaison went on, "There are things I can tell you and things I can't, but I can tell you there are major changes in procedures coming because of what happened to you." I thanked him and as I was hanging up the phone, hot tears began to roll down my face.
An article published by abcnews.go.com called Pushing Boundaries While 'Pushing Tin' by Jake Tapper and Avery Miller on February 16, 2006 at web address http://abcnews.go.com/W NT/US/ story?id=1627193&page=1 highlights alleged rampant sexual harassment in the high-pressure, high-stress and very male environment. A female controller recalled walking through her facility was like walking a gauntlet of looks and comments creating an intimidating environment during her interview on "20/20" in 1994. On the same "20/20" show another female controller said, "So I'm sitting there, working very heavy traffic, and all of a sudden I feel a hand -- not on my thigh, right in my crotch." Around February 10, 2006 at an airport a female controller fed up with a general culture of hostility and supervisors she deemed emotionally abusive quit her job.
It used to make me laugh every time I saw any FAA spokesperson on the TV say, "Safety was never compromised." In 2002 three woman at an Air Traffic Control Center, ?led complaints. All three women alleged after they complained the harassment got worse. According to an internal survey of women in the FAA in 2003 that number was 14 percent. The FAA stopped asking female employees if they had been sexually harassed in its 2005 survey.
The 2006 executive vice president of the union said, "The problem is that, from the administrator on down, they've created an environment of employee intimidation and employee harassment. When the administrator says, 'No matter what you do, there will be no consequences. We will defend your actions. We will condone it.' And this creates that culture where those that would abuse women in the workplace have safe haven to do so." At the time of this interview in 2006 the air traffic controllers union was in the midst of heated renegotiations with the FAA and the union complained that the environment is the fault of supervisors and the organization. I feel the union left out of the interview how it was their job to protect their Bargaining Unit Employees (BUEs) from disciplinary action. Meaning the union dues paying harasser got full protection, whereas the harassed are left hanging out to dry if the local union representatives did not like you as stated in the article, "…aviation experts caution that supervisors and the FAA management are not the only ones responsible -- that controllers in the union have also been a problem."
A female controller at an airport said she watched two controllers play a game of chicken with a pair of jetliners -- while a supervisor laughed. She tried to work within the FAA system just as I had. When her complaints were ignored, she went public just as I had too. Her allegations that near-misses were prevalent was vindicated by a special counsel investigation but she says at the time there was no investigation into the overall hostile work environment.
Another female controller complained to the EEOC about tampons scattered in her locker, job discrimination and a threatening letter containing obscene and sexist language. The EEOC ruled that she "was subjected to sex-based harassment and that the incidents were sufficiently severe or pervasive to create a hostile work environment." In 2004, the EEOC ruled against the FAA, saying, "The agency failed to prove that it took appropriate corrective action."
Another female controller was verbally abused by a male supervisor who was defended by the FAA, her family and friends said. In a phone conversation, her father recalled how bad it got for his daughter. It got so stressful, friends and family said, the woman her sister describes as very strong changed -- and eventually took her own life. "The day that she took it, she'd had an extremely stressful night at work," her father said. "They had a meeting in the morning and they did not seem to give her any backup at all in what had happened. And she walked off the job, and that was the last anyone ever talked to her." Posthumously the EEOC found in her favor and against the FAA. The FAA said that supervisor was disciplined and moved to a non-supervisory job while he continues to work for the FAA. At the conclusion of this article, the FAA said they have instituted new programs to eliminate such problems. This article was printed in 2006, and here we are in 2015 with pretty much the same.
Let us look at the union praised whistleblower, if the union officials had really wanted to protect her, she would not have had to leave the FAA with a damaged career suing the FAA in civilian court for almost one million dollars.
Then look at the woman that won here EEOC case post-mortem, having committed suicide from the mental terrorism she was enduring. Her case information reads as such; Gender Discrimination: Harassment. Complainant, an Air Traffic Controller (ATC) alleged discriminatory harassment, including a suspension, based on sex (female). The Commission found that the AJ's findings of fact were supported by substantial evidence, which demonstrated that complainant's supervisor exhibited gender bias. There was testimonial evidence from other air traffic controllers that the supervisor made derogatory comments about complainant and other female ATC's, and referred to complainant in sexist terms. The agency was ordered to provide back pay, restore leave usage, and pay attorney's fees to the Estate (September 21, 2005).
A former union national president was being sued for slander because in his blog he mentioned the supervisor in an unflattering light. The union voted and agreed to pay for some of his legal fees to fight the slander suit. I told the FAA Special Agents that I had to go see at a FAA Headquarters October 29 – November 1, 2012; I blame the union at least 70% for my situation. I was paying dues and they were fighting harder to protect the harassers than they were fighting to protect me.
I won my EEOC case in an out of court settlement on June 10, 2011. I had to withdraw my claim to get some of what I wanted for restitution. The FAA agreed to my promotion to a Staff Specialist until my mandatory retirement on September 30, 2014. When I returned to work on June 13, 2011, I was handed a memo stating, "Granted assignment to a Staff Specialist for 45 days only." At which time I will be ordered back to the control room and will have to take Annual Leave, Sick Leave, or Leave Without Pay if I have not obtained my medical clearance to return to controlling airplanes by then.
When I informed the Manager on June 13, 2011 about the agreement made the Friday before he said, "I don't know anything about that." That was the routine response I got from every manager at the Center every time I mentioned my case in any way, shape, or form. I believe their goal here was to cause me more stress by dragging out the execution of the settlement. At the same time telling me at work they have not received official notification on my new assignment and I was going on forced leave after the approved 45 days extra duty expired.
They placed me in the corner cubicle right next to two manager's office doors with a young man in the cubicle in front of me that had spent time in the Marines. It felt like he was my bodyguard. I am sure they all were quite nervous; I was. I was so quiet at my desk the Marine would literally walk back to my cubicle to check on me. My first week back was full of drama. They dumped my FAA email password a couple of times each day which meant I couldn't log into my computer and was having to spin my wheels on the phone a couple of times a day with the FAA IT people to reinstate my password. The computer I had to use when I could log in would not allow me to get to my AOL email and it forced me to have to go downstairs to the rooms that were set up for us to use on our breaks to surf the internet with. During one of those trips I ended up in a room with a woman I have worked with for all the years I had been at the Air Route Traffic Control Center, but only since 2005 had actually spoken with on occasion because we were in different areas with different days o?. She had been at the racetrack when I was there participating in a SportBikeTrackTime.com track day event on my 2005 CBR600RR. She was there watching her husbands' cousin ride. We began to talk about my current situation. She said, "I hated you for airing our dirty laundry." I told her about just a few of the things that forced me to go along with my lawyers request to do the interviews. She said, "I'm not mad at you anymore, but be prepared that the day you retire for people to tell you to go fuck yourself."
I was an Air Traffic Controller from 1990 to 2014. The facility has approximately 400 controllers and all the support personnel to run everything else. Every air traffic controller has their own unique set of initials to identify themselves on the recorded landlines when coordinating air traffic information and mine were "CQ." There are over twenty of these facilities in the US Airspace System almost exactly alike to oversee the National Air Space (NAS). When I would tell people, I am an air traffic controller they would sometimes respond, "Oh, you're the one at the airport with the orange batons guiding the airplane up to the gate." I always laughed and said, "No, here is your air traffic lesson of the day. The towers' you see at the airport work you on and off the ground. The airspace they work looks like an upside down wedding cake. As you are about to leave the Tower's airspace they hand you off to us at the Center. Then the Center controllers keep you separated from everyone else flying from A to B already. Everyone knows that the airlines HUB their flights; meaning they schedule arrivals and departures at the same time. That is why the Center job is slightly more stressful then the Tower's job. This is true with the smaller airports, but in my early days as a controller in training, we went to an Executive Airport for a tour of the operation to allow us to see what they do in conjunction to what we will be doing. On this day there was just one woman in the glass windowed tower working. It really did not seem to be very busy which is probably why we went there and not to the area's main airport, because we were a large group not just a few people. Not long after we arrived and introduced ourselves the woman controller was clearing a small plane for take-off when a primarily non-English speaking pilot in a helicopter asked for permission to cross over the top of the airport. The controller clearly told the helicopter pilot permission granted to cross after the small airplane had departed. As I watched out the tower cab windows I can see the helicopter flying parallel to the right of the runway, flying in the same direction, as the small plane is making his departure roll down the runway. As the small plane actually lifted off the ground the helicopter cuts hard left to cross over the top of the runway on a direct path with the departing aircraft. I remember the feeling of dread that overwhelmed me as the rush of adrenaline engulfed my body as the level of anxiety in me rose. Had the small plane not reacted as quickly as he had by going to full power putting the nose of the airplane almost straight up the two aircraft would have collided. I watched as the helicopter passed right next to the wheels of the aircraft as the controller got immediately on the radio with the helicopter pilot and very sternly advised him of his mistake. Then she very calmly thanked the pilot of the small plane for being so quick to act as we watched the small plane take a nosedive to regain the lift under its wings it needed to stay in the air and continue on its way. It was on this day that I decided I did not want to work at an airport. I will be quite happy looking at my little green blips on the radar screen and keeping them five miles and a thousand feet apart. When I am working your flight as you depart, I have to keep you separated from all the other flights that are taking o? along with the airplanes that are already under my control. The Center's airspace is broken up into sectors with their own frequencies. The sectors grouped into separate Areas assigned a set group of controllers that are required to keep currency on those sectors. To keep the flow of traffic safer there are airways set up all through the airspace for routine flight paths. My job gets stressful as you and everyone flying is approaching your destinations at the same time. I have to take all the different types of airplanes and get them descended and slowed and in trail before I hand them off to the Approach Control that is responsible for your destination airport. So technically I'm responsible for the start of that nicely spaced out line of airplanes you see coming in for their landing at the airports."
The following is a very condensed replay of my world. I start with the things from my childhood that I feel are pertinent to my story leading up to a journal like replay of the last few years in the FAA. The main reason for this book is for the people who have supported me and have been a positive influence in my world to get the full picture so to speak. And for the ones still in the FAA enduring this exact situation to see what to do and to learn from my mistakes and missteps' to help them get to a better quality of life.
Just a note to the FAA Special Agents. I was not informed what I was being sent to Headquarters' for when I came to meet you two, so you can use this to supplement the statement I gave you because this book comes directly from my journals, paperwork, notes, and calendars I kept over the years whereas what I gave you was only from memory, not Memorex. This is not everything, publisher requested to keep it brief for readability and to change the names of the players for liable reasons.
CHAPTER 2I am a silly girl with silly dreams. I wanted to marry Speed Racer. I wanted a husband, a couple of kids, a house in a wonderful neighborhood where we had our friends over with their kids having backyard BBQ's with Sunday Football on the TV while watching our kids grow up together as a great big happy group.
My father raised me to be furiously independent. I would be sent o? to face what the world was going to hand me with my father's words ringing in my head, "Go get 'em Tiger," as he would pat the back of my head as I ran along to do my mischief.
I was one of five white kids in elementary school as I can remember it. The saddest memory is having a white fur hat with matching fur pompoms at the end of the tie strings in a tabby color mix stolen from me I had just gotten for Christmas when I was about 7 years old. I was in the school bathroom at the end of the school day sitting on the toilet as I watched someone reach over the top of the door and grab my hat. Poof! As quick as that my hat was gone. From that day on, I never put anything over the top of the door that I do not want taken away from me.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from CQ, CQ ... My Last Transmission by Samantha Sims. Copyright © 2015 Carrie Deleon. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse.
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