TWT #217 –

On August 5th, 1981, US President Ronald Reagan personally fired 11,345 air traffic controllers in one fell swoop.

Honestly, I don’t even want to give any context or story behind this one. Let’s all just imagine that Reagan woke up one day and said “These 11K people… get rid of em!”

And that concludes today’s article for Today Was Terrible.*

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*Okay, okay fine, I’ll give you more of a story.

The Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, or PATCO, was a union with approximately 13,000 air traffic controller members.

In early 1981, PATCO began contract negotiations with the FAA. PATCO was asking for a reduced work week (to 32 hours), pay bumps of $10k/year for every member, and better retirement plans.

The FAA essentially said “nah” and agreed to some pay increases over a three year period. PATCO in turn also said “nah” and rejected the offer.

Thus, on August 3rd, PATCO’s 13,000 members officially went on strike.

Unluckily for them, it’s pretty clear that federal government employees legally cannot strike. So Reagan issued a statement giving the strikers 48 hours to get back to work, or face the music.

About 1,300 PATCO members went back their jobs… the other 11,000 did not.

Reagan making his speech telling PATCO employees to get back to work…

And so, exactly 38 years ago on August 5th, 1981, Ronald Reagan fired the remaining 11,345 air traffic controllers in one fell swoop.

Oof.

He also banned all 11K from ever serving in the federal government again.

Ouch!

Not to mention the PATCO union was disbanded later that year.

Now we could get into the fact that it took over 10 years to fully replace all of these lost air traffic controllers, and that eventually Bill Clinton lifted that lifetime ban. But that sounds boring and I’d rather leave you with the simple image of one man firing 11 THOUSAND people in an instant.

Sheesh.

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