During Wednesday’s House Appropriations Committee, Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL) questioned Acting FAA Administrator Chris Rocheleau about Trump's workforce cuts.
00:00I thank you for your efforts. Mr. Chairman, I yield back. Thank you. Mr. Quigley.
00:04Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Administrator, how many total FAA employees have taken the
00:10President's early retirement opportunity? How many total employees? So those numbers
00:16are not finalized yet, largely because we're processing through what we call DRP-2. So
00:22we had our first tranche of people that came through, and I believe that was roughly 700
00:26that applied for the DRP, and then now we're going through that process for the second one.
00:36So we'll roll those numbers up as we go through. I know that I'm in constant contact with my
00:41leadership team to understand what the impacts of those, and I would just note that in a number
00:47of those cases, we've been able to talk to people who have expressed interest and negotiate their
00:51time if they, in fact, do want to leave. But for air traffic controllers, for example,
00:58they've been saying that there have been no cuts to them, but how many have taken early retirement?
01:05So there have absolutely been no cuts, and the controllers themselves are not eligible.
01:10They're not eligible for early retirement. If anything, what the Secretary and I have done is
01:15incentivize the people who are retirement eligible. So if you've done 25 years and you're 51, 52,
01:2153 years old, we're giving those senior controllers that we need right now another 20% increase to
01:29their base salary just to stick around for another couple of years.
01:31I just wanted to confirm that because we've heard there have been no cuts to air traffic controllers.
01:36The concern is we have heard that there have been cuts to those workers who help, specifically
01:41some of the critical safety functions that support the frontline workers.
01:46the dismissal of probationary employees and early retirement buyout program. We're hearing that about 12% of the
01:55aeronautical information specialists have left the FAA or are poised to leave. These are informational
02:03specialists who update charts, maps, and key data after disruption or disturbances in airspace like
02:11weather or collision. This is accurate, we've been told. And how do you plan to make up for those losses?
02:19So again, we have not stopped hiring any safety critical positions, any of them.
02:25But those people have left or are leaving. So you are lower than where you were.
02:30So there are people that support the critical safety positions. And that is part of the ongoing assessment that I do with my leadership team to make sure that if we have people that have accepted those,
02:40that we're managing through that to ensure that there's those services to our controllers and our maintenance people and the like.
02:46And how do you do that? If you've lost 12% of the people who do those critical functions, who's doing it in the meantime?
02:54Well, there's a few ways. I mean, first and foremost, we are assessing how we're doing that and what can we do better.
02:59So for instance, going from a paper-based process to an electronic-based process. That's one of them.
03:04Making sure that we're hiring for critical safety positions and leveraging the talent that we do have that is staying and making sure that they can both do the critical safety functions as well as those support functions.
03:17And respectfully, you call them critical safety functions. Wouldn't it make more sense to have a plan, an assessment of how to replace them, how to phase them out rather than just do this so dramatically at the start?
03:29It's sort of managing your own crisis rather than planning to implement a program like this.
03:39We've been very intentional on how we work through this, recognizing that, as I mentioned, there are some people that may express interest in leaving earlier,
03:49and we can sit down with them and work through what that timeline looks for.
03:53So we can plan for what's behind them. And I would just say this, the people that are leaving, while we will miss them because they have been amazing public servants,
04:01there are a lot of talented people right behind them that are going to come in and pick up the pace.
04:07But I just have to belabor it. Wouldn't it have made more sense to have those discussions, see who's going to take this up,
04:14plan on who's going to take their place and phase it in as you go through this rather than do the cuts and then come back and figure out how do we manage that?
04:25I do think there was an opportunity at this case, though, even though we may look back and may have approached it a different way,
04:32there was an opportunity to allow people to leave that wanted to leave and at the same time negotiate with them for a smooth transition.
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