Proverbial

Last friday, president Lula promised rebellious air traffic controllers they wouldn’t be punished for striking, and that the government would have a solution to their problem by tuesday, when it was supposed to send a Provisory Measure (.br) to Congress demilitarizing the sector. On monday, back from Washington and after talks with military advisors and commanders, he pulled a Crazy Ivan and said the Air Force* could install an inquiry on strikers and punish them as they saw fit. Not surprisingly (.br):

Moments ago, in an interview to CBN radio, Fabio Fernandes, district attorney at Sao Paulo’s Work Justice, said controllers are working under Air Force Police surveillance and dressed in different uniforms to be more easily identified.

They suffer all sorts of embarrassments. Some talk about becoming reservists. Others have crying fits.

Now the question is whether we’ll see another strike during the Passover holiday, when airports will certainly be crowded. Some say controllers have stated it won’t happen, while other say one shouldn’t be too sure about it. The government says it won’t tolerate any funny business during the holidays. And just in case, it says it won’t be caught with its guard down again, that a contingency plan has already been made in case of a new strike. Is it any good?

The Air Force says it has a plan B: it guarantees only a few controllers stopped (those who were on call) and all it takes is to isolate and arrest them for the large majority to be dissuaded of following them, with the invaluable convincing power of the military inquiries currently running in the Public Military Ministry, a government-independent court. Punishments for mutiny are heavy (4 to 8 years imprisonment, with a veto over ever working on a public service again). That way, calling those who would be at home and don’t want to play with fire would be enough to replace the insubordinate.

The controllers’ leaders, on the other hand, say they’re underpaid, have no working conditions and aren’t giving a damn about inquiries or being expelled from the corporation and public service. If arrested, convicted and expelled, they’ll end up heroes. They say they have little to lose.

The result of this tug of war will most likely be known next Monday, after the holidays. In any case, what everybody understands is that the government had all the time in the world to make whatever provisions it saw fit to prevent this sort of thing, and chose to do nothing but undermine the military commanders power over their subordinates (air traffic controllers are sergeants). Now they don’t have the money or the time to quicly demilitarize the sector, nor the political and hierarquical power to squash the rebellious.

It would be a stalemate, except for the fact that controllers seem willing to give up the game instead of negotiating a draw. Their demands seem legitimate, even though it seems somewhat damning that it took the death of 154 people for them to act upon it. And even worse that their course of action was to inconvenience millions of people (even leading to the death of one passenger from stress, while waiting for a flight to go home).

The government, on the other hand, seems to understand it needs to demilitarize the sector as soon as possible, but it doesn’t have the money or the political power to make it anytime soon, and so decided it’s better to wash its hands and leave the problem to the military, instead of risking some sort of retaliation from high ranking officials.

Let’s just hope someone knows what they’re doing. This sort of thing doesn’t inspire much confidence, though:

Frightened with the crisis’ unraveling, a controller sought a congressman. He wanted to know if, by working under a civilian agency, he’d lose his (state funded) integral retirement, home and health plan. With a positive answer, said he didn’t know whether he wanted to be “demilitarized” anymore.

*The Air Force (or FAB - Forca Aerea Brasileira), itself, is only a part of what is called the Aeronautic, which is the whole military body responsible for overseeing anything related to air traffic in Brazil, which in turn exists under the Defense Ministry, along with the other forces. I only decided to use the term “Air Force” to mean the whole Aeronautic Command because it seems to make more sense in English.