Ethical Analysis of Air Traffic Controller Strike in 1981

This article provides an ethical analysis of the Air Traffic Controller Strike in 1981. It discusses the ethics of the negotiation tactics used by the union, the government's response, and the fault of the union negotiators. It also suggests a different approach to negotiation that could have been beneficial for the union. The article includes references to support the analysis.

Running head: AIR TRAFFIC 1981
AIR TRAFFIC 1981
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1AIR TRAFFIC 1981
Answer 1:
Ethics are moral principles which are responsible for governing people’s behavior while
conducting an activity (Vanclay, Baines and Taylor 2013). It involves values and moral
principles which lets making the right choice from the wrong. In this specific case of the 1981
Air Traffic controller strike, the method used by the union is neither fair nor ethical as a
negotiation tactics. Negation is a process is based on communication and motivation. Since
negotiation is about getting the other party’s agreement, often it involves less than frank or open
communication (Reyes and Rosso 2014). Trust is the most vital aspect of negotiation since the
other party agree to go along the decision made by the negotiator. In this particular case, the
entire information was not shared with every members. Members were not aware of the
limitations and the limited authority. The relation between two negotiating parties were already
deteriorated that led to no fruitful consequences. The consequences were not known by all the
members and therefore when the strike was declared the consequence led to job loss of every
member involved in the strike. It was an action that was strictly prohibited in the contract.
Considering the ethics of consequences it was not ethical as most of the information was
withheld where the entire information was not shared between the two negotiating parties.
Answer 2:
The government’s response to the strike cannot be considered ethical. Although it was
fair as it was already mentioned earlier about the expected consequences, the punishment was
based on Poli’s action where other members were mostly unaware of the consequences.
According to the ethics of consequences, the result that was obtained was unrealistic (Zwitter
2014). The government removed all striking controllers from their jobs, they were fined with

2AIR TRAFFIC 1981
several millions of dollars per day as they had violated the rules, some of the other union
members along with Poli were sent to prison, and they were banned from any further
employment with US government. The punishments were of higher capacities than the members
of the union could undertake. The consequences only led to the nation’s population from
employment. The outcome was not best considering the larger aspect of the situation. There was
no benefit of the decision to either government, the member of the unions or to the nation as a
whole. According to the ethics of purpose, the employees were only aware of the partial
information which causes them to face severe consequences. While the wrong decision was by
the Poli, the consequence had to be faced by the entire union members.
Answer 3:
The union negotiators of PATCO were at the fault in the in this negotiation breakdown.
The reasons that can be considered in order to understand that the fault lies from the beginning.
The union negotiators were limited by the authority from the beginning for their labor
negotiation. However, they attempted was to gain public sympathy instead of gaining trust of the
government. They assumed, bringing the issue to the public forum would help them gain public
support by manipulating public support for their plight. The better method would have been
giving a clear understanding that they were limited by the authorities. However they decided to
show their solidarity with the union constituency and displayed a high degree of militancy for
their demand and expectation from the government. It was stated earlier that any such behavior
would lead to consequences that may harm not only the union negotiators but also their
constituency. Considering the tactics that have been used by the union negotiators of PATCO, it
was important to identify the ethical system first and determine the substantive fairness of the
negotiation. The behavior that was showed by the union negotiators was not considering the

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ethical and unethical concealment behaviors (Brakewood and Poldrack 2013). The main fault
was not creating the trust with the government but going against it without considering the
consequences. Therefore, it can be stated that the major fault was the union negations as they did
not reveal the full information including their limitation and consequences in regard to their
actions. The union negotiators went beyond their authority and breached rules that was
mentioned in the contract. The result was ought to be unexpected and extreme measures by the
government for the fault that was committed by the union negotiators. Therefore, learning to
build trust with the FAA could have been the better approach to the issue by PATCO
Answer 4:
A negation is a voluntary process where communication and motivation plays a vital role.
In this same issue as well, where the PACTO went for a strike against FAA could have been
conducted with a different approach. A negotiation involves open communication with every
points that the negotiator needs to present in order to gain agreement (Hau et al. 2013).
Negotiation needs fair agreement and needs to reconcile deceptive tactics. Trust is the most vital
part of appropriate negotiation. In the similar perspective, PATCO could have implemented the
mentioned factors. The first step would have been a clear and coherent presentation of
information to the FAA regarding their issues. The next step would have been building friendly
relationship and building trust with the other negotiating party. In a distributive negotiation, the
main focus is meeting personal interest despite being aware of the loss that others may have to
face. PATCO could have been considerate regarding the consequences that every members
would have to face. The negotiation done by PATCO was a distributive negotiation and
attempting for an integrative negotiation with FAA would have been different and beneficial for
PATCO. The communication between the two negotiators was different and therefore, it could

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have done differently. Considering the ethics of purpose, the purpose of the negotiation was for
the benefit of member however considering the ethics of principles the negotiation was led
astray. Also, the ethic of consequences was only to benefit the members of the PATCO and not
considering the other party. When FAA turned down the proposal, instead of attempting for a
conflict resolution where both the party could find a peaceful solution, PATCO preferred strike
which was against the contract.

5AIR TRAFFIC 1981
References:
Brakewood, B. and Poldrack, R.A., 2013. The ethics of secondary data analysis: Considering the
application of Belmont principles to the sharing of neuroimaging data. Neuroimage, 82, pp.671-
676.
Hau, Y.S., Kim, B., Lee, H. and Kim, Y.G., 2013. The effects of individual motivations and
social capital on employees’ tacit and explicit knowledge sharing intentions. International
Journal of Information Management, 33(2), pp.356-366.
Reyes, A. and Rosso, P., 2014. On the difficulty of automatically detecting irony: beyond a
simple case of negation. Knowledge and Information Systems, 40(3), pp.595-614.
Vanclay, F., Baines, J.T. and Taylor, C.N., 2013. Principles for ethical research involving
humans: ethical professional practice in impact assessment Part I. Impact Assessment and
Project Appraisal, 31(4), pp.243-253.
Zwitter, A., 2014. Big data ethics. Big Data & Society, 1(2), p.2053951714559253.