PATCO Strike, Reagan's Pledge, and Oath-Breaking

Bailes 1 DRAFT PATCO Strike, Reagan’s Pledge, and Oath-Breaking First Things First: Why So Little Scholarship? This paper seeks to bring some preliminary rhetorical questions to a significant political event, namely the 1981 federal air traffic controllers’ strike in the United States, a moment that still lacks adequate scholarly attention by communication studies. To search for scholarly studies of this event, one must search primarily labor, business, or legal journals—and even then the pickings few and far between than they should be. In addition, only a handful of humanities and social science journals provide bits of analysis, but this coverage is almost exclusively book reviews of the only major scholarly works on the topic published over the past three decades (The Air Controllers’ Controversy: Lessons from the PATCO Strike by Arthur B. Shostak and David Skocik, Silent Skies: The Air Traffic Controllers’ Strike by Willis J. Nordlund, and Collision Course: Ronald Reagan, the Air Traffic Controllers, and the Strike that Changed America by Joseph A McCartin). So how do we explain the thin layer of scholarship about one of the most important labor actions in contemporary American history? I begin with the problem of scanty academic work because less in this case may tell us more about the significance of this event than we might imagine—for PATCO’s demise “is the story of the first federal union that violated the law and paid the ultimate price” and in fact “the first time in American history that a federal union would take on the federal government and lose” (Nordlund 10-11). The paucity of scholarly examination of the 1981 federal air traffic controllers’ strike is stunningly obvious when compared to the generous scholarly output produced about the 1981 government workers’ strikes and labor organization by Lech Wałęsa and Solidarność (the Bailes 2 independent, self-governing union that broke the law and defied the Polish government). The disparity in scholarly interest is intriguing since both events involved government workers breaking the law and striking. It is true that the political situations differed, despite their happening during the same time period. Yet both developed out of historically difficult relationships with their governments, organizing despite huge pressures against them. In terms of striking against their governments, the economic-political contest between the Reagan Administration and PATCO (Professional Air Traffic Control Organization) during the 1981 strike ended the careers of nearly 12,000 PATCO members (i.e. two-thirds of the nation’s air traffic controllers) as they were fired and blacklisted from obtaining any future federal employment and any future international air traffic control work. But this strike did not capture the world’s attention the way that the Polish strike did. The Solidarność operated with a much larger union membership (in the millions), taking greater risks (including defying martial law), sustaining its campaign over a much longer time period. To Solidarność’s credit, political interest for its cause came from all corners of the earth, ranging from the Pope to the CIA (both of which provided funding to the strikers), focusing attention on the problems of Soviet Communism within the Polish government and therefore over the Polish people and workers. With international attention and support from liberal and conservative groups alike, including Ronald Reagan’s critical decision to impose economic sanctions on Poland in support of the Solidarność strikers, Poland became a critical mass for the West’s interest in causing fractures in the vast Soviet Communist realm. Among Western nations, Soviet Communism had become as passionately reviled as American Capitalism had become exuberantly embraced in the 1980s. The double mantra of corporate capitalism and laissez faire drove major American governmental policies during the decade and into the next. In this sense, the glaring popularity of Western-style Bailes 3 capitalism provides a rationale for the sparse amount of scholarship on PATCO versus the hefty attention to Solidarność, The issue of scholarly attention, therefore, becomes clear: It is not about government unionism, but about the regimes in which unions form. That is, we may safely infer that the lack of strong interest academically in dissent as a strike involving PATCO is related to academe’s critical operation within a financially protective capitalist regime, suggesting there exists an underlying resistance to studying any labor movements from the 1980s onward that challenge a capitalist regime. And we may also correctly infer that there remains an openness to studying any national unionism that challenges a communist or other totalitarian regime. In this sense, dissent is good for one regime (capitalist) but not another (not capitalist). The conditions for dampening a healthy scholarly interest in the 1981 PATCO strike are made clear in Nordlund’s careful examination of the event, Silent Skies, in which he offers three reasons for why there has been “relatively little written about the PATCO strike and its aftermath.” First, organized labor’s unhappiness with how the strike “was conducted” and “what may have caused it,” including how the administration responded—all of which also soured many in labor scholarship; second, at the same time, scholars cannot gush over the federal response which gave Reagan “political capital in the early months of the crisis” because in the long run the government’s reaction “smacked of overkill and overreaction that tainted the public’s view of the situation”; and third, the trend in academic circles has been to hitch “their wagons to the dogma of noninterventionist economics, of which labor unions are the antithesis,” which means that some “academics apparently feel that the unions got what they deserved” (2324). As Nordlund goes on to assert his own reasons for taking the event seriously, it is clear that, in stark contrast to the extensive academic examination and support of the right to strike within a government by the Solidarność movement, the 1981 PATCO strike was an unnecessary Bailes 4 complication in our American economic-legal-political system—i.e. explicitly problematic within a federal system meant to uphold law and order for all, implicitly bothersome inside an American market economy whose demands for enterprise and profits merit better labor management to prevent future disruptions. This bias suggests an unwritten scholarly taboo against interrogating too vigorously the government’s actions against PATCO and an implicit academic prohibition against analyzing the event as an invocation for greater and more militant dissent. That is, inquiries into resisting or challenging capitalist regimes run counter to academe’s vested economic interests—hence, the history is shaped as business and labor relations lessons within the management regime. Analogous to experts turning economicpolitical justice issues in the PATCO case into labor management concerns is the larger critical agreement of seeing Martin Luther King Jr.’s civil rights cause not as the economic justice he championed, but as a refracted image that expresses as solely about racial equality. Even though some of King’s most ardent supporters have made the case the civil rights was about racial politics, this movement was nonetheless wrapped within the larger issue of economic equality. The scholarly slant, therefore, away from examining an American public-sector strike that included law-breaking methods as characterized Nordlund’s work provides potency to the argument that we reconsider the event. As Nordlund’s version of the event leans towards a discussion about fixing management techniques yet standing firm against lawbreakers, PATCO’s fight to improve air traffic safety by improving poor workplace conditions (such as regular equipment failures), preventing workers’ stress-related health problems, decreasing the work week (at the time, a six-day week with sliding shifts that could change daily), increasing pay (because a controller could only achieve the highest government step in pay even if more overtime work was required) is eventually subsumed under a single legal formula: Bailes 5 PATCO broke the law, pure and simple, and there was a price to be paid. . . . Other unions had succeeded in the federal sector, and there was little to suggest that the PATCO would not succeed as well. However, the PATCO could have exerted pressure on the system through means other than a strike, too. One gets the distinct flavor of greed in the character of the PATCO demands. . . . The leaders of the federal unions and federal officials are human beings, and they make mistakes in judgment, read into conditions and situations much that is not there, and permit ego and self-serving motivation to flavor the decision-making process. Nevertheless, the PATCO strike and its aftermath are an important part of American labor history and should be studied carefully by those with a stake in the success of the governmental process and the role of workers and their representatives in the economic system. In brief, that means every one of us. (2425) Published in 1998, Nordlund’s study obviously does not produce a Marxist or other economicpolitical analysis that would promote dissent within a marketplace system. Yet, to be fair, neither does it promote continuing harsh practices by managers in federal agencies. Indeed, Nordlund’s aim is to provide a learning tool for labor-management relations by critiquing both sides—in this case, both the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) and PATCO. To this end, Nordlund encourages respect for unions, but never to the point of accommodating a public-sector labor strike. His purpose, therefore, is certainly well-suited for the business classroom in a corporatecapitalist system. So what’s the usefulness of this text in educating dissent? The critique details business management thinking which would be helpful for labor advocates to understand, but the text is also laden with the acumen of an accountant demonstrating the dangers of mishandling Bailes 6 labor groups within a free market system. Indeed, Nordlund recognizes “the long history of acrimonious relationships between the FAA and its controller unions,” that the FAA’s method of managing controllers was “rigid, insensitive, directive, militaristic,” and that in hindsight the President may have been imprudent,” but that (and this last point is the most important in the book) there “is no question that the PATCO violated a federal law.” For Nordlund, one of the more significant regrets about firing the strikers is the cost to the nation in training new controllers and rebuilding a new system—“one can be sure they are in the double-digit billions of dollars.” In the end, his warning to corporate America can be heard loud and clear: Namely, when downsizing and outsourcing drive the American worker out of jobs in the future (think of contemporary America), “the interest in a common voice provided by unions could quickly emerge” (194-201). It is obvious that effective management critiques and accommodation rationales are infused into this study, identifying Nordlund with the deliberate enterprise to pitch to corporate America and federal agency heads better relations with labor, not only to reduce unnecessary costs that job actions might cause and to enhance personnel handling for increased productivity, but also to deflect any future attempts at dissent, just in case such protests or strikes become options within a new labor movement. Again, although not enough scholarship has been made of this historically important situation, a majority of the public still recalls the event in some detail, even with many citizens born after 1981 able to identify generally what happened. In January 1982, five months after the strike began, an ABC/Washington Post poll showed that more than half the country felt that President Reagan’s handling of the air traffic controllers was “about right” or “not harsh enough” (“In Showdown”). These strong public attitudes can be linked to the ethical question at the center Bailes 7 of the rhetorical and political contest between Reagan and PATCO and specifically Reagan used an oath to define oath-breaking. Statement of Purpose The treatment of oath-breakers is a concern in this project. But the major focus of this project is to critique the rhetorical situation of this national economic-political contest by examining how President Reagan perceived and utilized oath-taking/oath-breaking as and within speech acts, an approach that should raise critical questions about the performativity of oaths, affidavits, or pledges overall. Of particular interest is how Reagan’s August 3, 1981, speech on the PATCO strike was used to appear as both an act for compelling union members back to work and yet a way of mobilizing the public and the media to support his ultimatum of firing the nearly 12,000 striking air traffic controllers. Also of special interest is Reagan’s pledge to PATCO during the 1980 presidential campaign. Borrowing from J. L. Austin’s Speech Act Theory via the work by Phyllis Kaburise as well as Giorgio Agamben, I make some preliminary theoretical connections between the linguistic-rhetorical significance of oaths or pledges and speech acts as performativity used within Reagan’s “defining moment” 1981 speech on the PATCO strike and as comparison his own pledge penned in 1980 to PATCO. Kaburise’s definition of “speech act theory” is helpful here: Speech Act Theory, stripped of all its trimmings, operates on the basic belief that language is primarily for communication and for this to happen certain rituals have to be observed. The theory goes on to claim that the functions of, the reasons for, or the intentions behind communication can be classified. Each type of function, reason or intention is then known as a “speech act.” (72) Bailes 8 Kaburise goes on to explain that “according to Austin,” utterances such as oaths or pledges “are not used just to say things, that is, to describe states of affairs, but rather to ‘do’ things,” which “Austin classifies as ‘performatives.’” The problem is that performatives, such as oaths or pledges, are not factual descriptions nor are they evaluated as true or false, “yet they can go ‘wrong,’” according to Austin. That is, by going wrong, the speech act can be “unhappy” or “infelicitous” in what is done by the act is unsuccessful (74-75). Applying this principle to Reagan’s uses of oaths or pledges, I hope to show that for both Reagan and PATCO find these performatives “unhappy.” And yet I also want to suggest that the strike itself performed within in this major economic-political contest as an “extreme communicative act,” or nonlinguistic act that boosts “illocutionary force” (Wee 2162). Before examining Reagan’s use of the oath, affidavit, and pledge, let me background that analysis first with a short historical sketch of air traffic controllers, then examine the question concerning sovereignty versus human rights in the PATCO strike, and then the significance of oaths to the federal employees. A Short Historical Sketch From 1962 to 1970, air traffic controllers took off the ground as a public-sector union, eventually forming PATCO. If past is prologue, however, the pre-emergence of ATC (air traffic control) as a professional union deserves some attention. Indeed, as Shostak and Skocik argue, even “the provocation for the August 1981 strike can be traced back over a half century to the very origin of the modern controller’s role” (29). From the late 1920s until 1981, controllers went from being flag men for small planes to becoming high-tech operators for juggling dozens of giant passenger planes at once. Communication and safety were at the center of the early development of an ATC unit, yet it is painfully clear that for fifty years ATC operators had almost no forum with little voice in matters concerning improvements in ATC. In the early years, upon the open Bailes 9 landscape of the skies, aviators rode alone like cowboys on the range, lifting off and setting down without a hitch. That changed quickly as the skies filled with more planes, many of which carried passengers. Nevertheless, from the perspective of pilots, increased control from the ground only restricted their flight independence. For pilots, ATC may have been a necessary part of aviation’s advances in and demands by flight instrumentation, but ATC would continue to be seen as a pilot-oriented, blue-collar occupation rather than as a highly-skilled, white-collar organization. That would change, as McCartin explains: ATC became a “highly technical and fast-evolving profession” by the end of World War II as “federalization of air traffic control . . . provided the impetus for the creation of the controller as an indispensable figure in postwar air transportation” (18). Even then—with greater federal oversight, more technical reliance, and increased commercial travel—the tug-a-war of control of the skies continued. Despite overcoming the risks of pilots flying “by the seat of their pants,” the degree to which pilot autonomy in flight was valued as greater than leadership from ground control remained a source of tension in aviation from the 1930s onward. And according to Erik M. Conway, despite the fact that pilots had “to reject” their own “sensory motion data upon which they had previously relied” and practice an “extreme form of technological faith” (34), these captains of the sky begrudgingly learned to depend on “radar operators” who “had to feed” controllers “the proper information quickly and accurately” which would be reissued to pilots in “the form of steering commands,” to which “pilots had to respond immediately” (133). As Conway further explains, this coordination of human and technological communication was complex yet essential to flight safety, even to the point that a pilot’s momentary delay in acting on ATC information “could be fatal” (133). Nonetheless, Conway argues that a pilot’s ability to fly and land was only complicated by increased “modern air traffic control” (10). Although the “Air Commerce Act Bailes 10 was passed in 1926” to direct the “Secretary of Commerce with fostering air commerce, issuing and enforcing air traffic rules, licensing pilots, certifying aircraft, establishing airways, and operating and maintaining aids to air navigation” (“Brief History”), it was not until the 1930s that “commercial and military pilots” were required to receive training with instrumentation (Conway 29). During the 1930s, air crashes in which very famous people died glued the public’s attention on air safety. After the very popular football coach at Notre Dame, Knute Rockne, and U.S. Senator Bronson Cutting of New Mexico were killed in separate commercial crashes, public outcry brought federal action: “President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Civil Aeronautics Act in 1938,” establishing a “three-member Air Safety Board that would conduct accident investigations and recommend ways of preventing accidents” (“Brief History”). Furthermore, the CAA (Civilian Aeronautics Authority) was established by this act; during “World War II, for defense purposes, CAA extended its air traffic control system to include operation of airport towers” (“Brief History”). Before these changes had been made by the federal government, ATC workers were seen as possessing few skills, mere flag men for signaling where to land; ATC employees were “undervalued and overlooked,” an order of squires attending to the calls of knightly pilots (Shostak 29). With commercial travel picking up, military defenses on the rise, and safety concerns growing through the 1930s, reliable air control was necessary (Shostak 30). Roosevelt’s federal initiatives eventually added new ATC centers across the nation and brought “scores of new hires” (Shostak 30). According to McCartin, however, problems remained—the greatest of which was inadequate and unreliable equipment (for example, most early ATC centers “were equipped only with a blackboard, a large table map, a teletype machine and telephones”) (18). From the late 1930s to the late 1950s, those few ATC centers that had radar equipment depended on “ex-military radar systems stripped from naval aircraft carriers and Bailes 11 terminated air force radar facilities” while “over 99 percent of America’s entire civil aviation system nevertheless remained on a nonradar basis” (Shostak 31). For those ATC centers with radar, TRACON (terminal radar approach control) facilities “guided flights into and out of metropolitan airports” while ARTCC (air route traffic control center) facilities “handled traffic between points of origin and destination” (McCartin 18). By the late 1950s, air crash tragedies again, not the daily concerns expressed by controllers on the job, forced aviation to take necessary changes. In 1957, the CAA put “all of the nation’s airspace above twenty-four thousand feet under the active supervision of controllers” (McCartin 18). In 1958, modernizing ATC equipment and increasing the number of ATC positions became parts of the mission of a new federal agency, the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration), which replaced the CAA (Shostak 31). And so by 1961, the FAA was “the second largest independent employer of government (only the VA was larger)” with “13,000 air traffic controllers in its employ (along with 28,000 other staffers)” (Shostak 31). Safety may have been a driving public force behind these reforms, but the forces for increased safety were the twin engines of airlines going into the 1960s—increased passenger air travel and soaring airline profits: “Traffic was growing by about 15% a year, profits were rolling in, airline shares were favorites in the stock market and there appeared to be no end in sight to the era of plenty” (Bender and Altschul 92). Historians now note that post-war U.S. airlines operated as if in a “Utopia” (Mayo 103). During the following years, public sector unions began appearing, and so PATCO appeared on the scene, a union that offered ATC much stronger voice. Overall public sector unions grew “during a period of plummeting private sector union membership: ‘Between 1960 and 1980 the public sector in the United States experienced a dramatic spurt in unionism, which changed it from one of the least organized to one of the most heavily organized parts of the Bailes 12 economy’” (Freeman 365). I will return to PATCO as I take up the strike. But after the 1981 PATCO strike and mass firing, private sector unionism fell further behind. It is clear that one of the major effects of Reagan’s decision was to signal to American corporations the “green light” to use hardline tactics with unions. For example, from 1985-86, a local UFCW (United Food and Commercial Workers) went on strike against Hormel, a meatpacking plant in Minnesota, as a rejection of Hormel’s proposal for a 23 percent cut in wages (from $10.69 to $8.25 per hour) and a 30 percent cut in benefits. Hormel’s offer had come after a year when the company posted $29 million in profits. Following the Reagan PATCO example, “the company hired permanent replacement workers at $10.25 an hour, and the governor called out the National Guard to police the picket lines in an increasingly bitter confrontation,” ending only after the national UFCW stepped in and agreed to a lower wage ($10.25—the wage given scabs) with no guarantee to allow the “hundreds who had honored the picket lines” a return to employment. By 1989, Hormel had “subleased . . . the plant to a company that paid $6.50 an hour” (Murray 97-98). Plainly, the 1981 PATCO strike initiated “a new wave of union-busting, corporate takeovers, outsourcing, anti-labor management consultants, take-backs and give-backs, and legislation protecting permanent workers” (Murray 117). Sovereignty versus Human Rights Nordlund discusses the 1981 PATCO conflict as a contest between sovereign authority and human rights. In this sense, the Reagan administration acted as if the federal government were an ultimate sovereign authority while PATCO acted as if the rights of federal employees were essential to the federal government’s sovereign authority. At the core of this sovereignty and human rights dilemma in Reagan’s speech is an affidavit that Reagan refers to it as an oath. Here it would be helpful to make a distinction between the oath and the affidavit as defined in Bailes 13 Title 5 of the United States Code, which is required for any federal employment. Although the affidavit is one of four parts of the constitutional definition of the oath, some division should be done to focus more effectively on Reagan’s performance. The oath, found in Title 5 USC § 3331, must be performed as sworn statement by all elected, appointed, or hired to the federal government before holding an office or position: An individual, except the President, elected or appointed to an office of honor or profit in the civil service or uniformed services, shall take the following oath: I, (AB), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God. (“5 USC § 3331”) The history of this oath has had controversy from the very origin of the nation. A U.S. government website for the House of Representatives provides some explanation, which I found intriguing: The “founders were divided. Should an oath be required in a free country at all?” One delegate, James Wilson from Pennsylvania, argued at the “Federal Constitutional Convention” that he viewed “oaths as ‘left-handed security only’ and that ‘a good government did not need them and a bad one could not or ought not to be supported.” Ironically, Noah Webster, who standardized literally our American speech into an American-English lexicon, characterized oaths as “instruments of slavery” and “badge[s] of folly, borrowed from the dark ages of bigotry.” Yet despite these calls for refusing oaths in a free society, the “founders decided to Bailes 14 require an oath for federal and state officials—absent a religious test—in the Constitution,” although the oath did not receive specified wording until Congress’ first act (“Oath”). Oath as Performative—And “Unhappy” If we take this “support and defend the U.S. Constitution” oath seriously as a performative, does it not pose serious problems that go beyond even the questions of fealty that we find in such rituals (typically religious but also military). Taking this federal oath cannot, for instance, alleviate the anxiety of believing one will be able to fulfill all the promises within it. Questions of adequacy, competence, and even the will haunt the perfectionist who imagines a myriad of situations that would prevent him or her of living up to this obligation. But in this sense, isn’t the oath an “unhappy” performative? Not surprisingly, the problem exists even if one believes he or she can live up to the oath or takes seriously in certain circumstances and lives up to the oath. Take, for instance, the case involving Captain Medina and Lieutenant Calley during the Vietnam War. Medina was court-martialed in 1971 for ordering his men to kill innocent Vietnamese civilians. Eventually, Medina was acquitted, with the help of legal counsel F. Lee Bailey (coincidentally enough Bailey was the catalyst in founding PATCO in 1968). On the other hand, Calley was found guilty for killing 109 My Lai civilians, mostly women and children, and was sentenced to life in prison. Because Calley’s defense had been that he was following the orders of his superiors per his oath, there was a national outrage and a mass call for his release. He was released after serving three or so years in military prison. What is significant here is that as a performative, the military oath (which is similar to the oath above) adds this condition of military discipline and obedience: “I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice” (Oliver). In some sense, this part of the oath appears to free the oath-taker from Bailes 15 acting freely, but as the Uniform Code of Military Justice implies, each soldier has an individual duty not to follow orders if they are unlawful, often referred to as “The Principle of Nuremberg.” It is important to note here that most of the PATCO members by 1981 were Vietnam-era veterans; they “had not been drafted,” but “had willingly enlisted in the service” (McCartin 8). Because FAA tapped the military for many of its controllers, veterans were the most likely candidates for air traffic control in the United States, explaining the “militaristic” atmosphere of the occupation. Returning to the oath, the question of the “unhappy” utterance weighed heavy on these union members. For Agamben, the oath is not so much about the statement than it is about performing “efficacy” (4). If Agamben is correct, then the oath performs its purpose by bringing about a result that is concerned more with the effect than it is about the speaker. Agency is downplayed. Efficacy is the “capacity to produce effects” or “to effect the object intended” (OED). The federal oath is a performative with effect of binding. Yet the oath’s temporality is critical to its promise as well, so it is a “future act” for Agamben while for Hobbes the oath includes past and future acts into one “true reply” to the “semantic content of a dictum.” And alhough Plato cautions against oath-taking (which he argues exposes citizens to perjury) Homer’s Autolycus in the Odyssey utters oaths as verbal tricks to signify literally and figuratively opposite meanings at the same time (Agamben 6-8). Edward Frankel says that “the one who holds the fides placed in him by a man has this man at his mercy” (Agamben 26). The “man” holding the “fides” in this case is the President of the United States despite his pledge (yet to be looked at) to PATCO. The oaths (discussed above) are typically the most recognized by the public. But there are three other parts to the federal oath. For the purposes of this paper I am limiting the evidence just to the affidavit that Reagan refers to, although he reads only parts of this affidavit into his Bailes 16 speech, and even then the parts he reads have been revised for greater impact. Here is the actual affidavit with the section that Reagan uses underlined, and with which Reagan obviously took liberties to create a streamlined version of the affidavit (his version to be presented shortly): An individual may not accept or hold a position in the Government of the United States or the government of the District of Columbia if he—(1) advocates the overthrow of our constitutional form of government; (2) is a member of an organization that he knows advocates the overthrow of our constitutional form of government; (3) participates in a strike, or asserts the right to strike, against the Government of the United States or the government of the District of Columbia; or (4) is a member of an organization of employees of the Government of the United States or of individuals employed by the government of the District of Columbia that he knows asserts the right to strike against the Government of the United States or the government of the District of Columbia. (“5 USC § 7311”) This affidavit has several legal implications that should be addressed before discussing its performativity. The affidavit had been central in several legal cases against PATCO during the 1970s, legal suits over a constant barrage of work slowdowns by air traffic controllers who had used these actions as a way to muscle the top-down FAA. During that decade, PATCO (which had only recently unionized in 1968, six years after President John F. Kennedy’s 1962 Executive Order 10988 opened the door for federal employees to organize) had begun immediately conducting “sickouts” which were orchestrated “calls into work sick” across regional or national airports, effectively slowing down or halting air travel for days or weeks. As McCartin points out, “The ‘sickout’ was becoming common enough that cops jokingly called it the ‘blue flu’ and firefighters the ‘red rash’” (95). PATCO also used “by-the-book” job actions to bring effective Bailes 17 “slowdowns,” actions that involved following work procedures, guidelines, and directives to the tee (McCartin 117). Although these job actions seem to fall short of a strike, the courts viewed these job actions differently, thus “enjoining PATCO from striking” which “remained in effect” through the 1981 strike. Furthermore, in the 1978 case Air Transport Association v. PATCO, the Second Circuit Court stressed “the vital role air controllers play in ensuring public safety” and “reiterating that strikes against the federal government constitute crimes,” reminding union members “of their oath to uphold the laws of the United States,” stating furthermore “that the perception of being grossly underpaid and mistreated does not justify violating the law and striking against the government” (Murphy 938). As illocutionary, the affidavit seems to act as Austin’s “commissive,” which “places obligations on the speaker” or, for John Searle, commits “the speaker, at varying degrees, to some particular future course of action,” such as “promises, offers, threats, and vows” (Kaburise 80). Problematic, however, is that the future course of action is always present and ongoing in this affidavit, so that within the definition of the “commissive” this affidavit promises an avoidance of job actions immediately. If there is a promise in the future, it is to continue the avoidance one is practicing. So the question of temporal satisfaction of fulfilling one’s obligation in this affidavit is both complete (now) and incomplete (future). Although this discontinuous continuity causes ambiguous feelings about at what point in time we have fulfilled our promises, there is still the focus on what not to do or the negative. In this sense, another question emerges: if the performativity of this speech act is to threaten or to prevent, or to hang like a warning sign (which would both prevent and threaten), then how is it performed except in the negative? Unstated is an understanding of penalty, of losing one’s federal employment, but the point is that as performativity, the affidavit is a prohibition shaped like a promise. And so it is only Bailes 18 “unhappy” in disregarding the promise not to strike or call for one’s right to strike. So in a less profound yet Machiavellian sense, the affidavit is a trap that disallows what would be normal labor activity whereas the federal oath before it claims some action to be performed in the future if not now (“support,” “defend,” “bear”). Before moving on to analyze Reagan’s use of this affidavit, one more important although less noticeable effect of this affidavit should be discussed. The affidavit also suggests a performativity relevant to the PATCO self-identity, namely the affidavit’s paradoxical effect of reinforcing PATCO’s indispensability. How so? Indispensability becomes an unintended necessary condition of swearing not to strike because the threat of a strike suggests two hidden problems with labor’s power for the federal government, both of which emphasize indispensability for government workers, especially those who have already organized into a public sector union. The first concern is that a strike (maybe even talk of the right to strike) could potentially wreak havoc on government services and make governing a matter of hardball negotiation—therefore, increasing a sense of the political power of disruption that federal employees could have by striking. The second concern is that a strike would indicate more painfully for some governmental agencies, such as the FAA, an almost total reliance on certain professional or experienced workers—therefore, augmenting the sense of the occupational power of disruption that some federal professional could have by striking. Thus, the illocutionary force of indispensability can also be seen multiplied with the very strike itself that carried on long after Reagan’s ultimatum on August 3, 1981. As mentioned before, it took billions of dollars and more than a decade to return air traffic control to anything normal. But one may ask, so where’s the indispensability in that? The answer is complex, but worth the discussion since indispensability was central to the PATCO strike. As federal Bailes 19 employees not yet on strike, controllers placed themselves outside the context of national labor law while appealing to their “indispensable” roles to the nation’s air transportation and safety. Within rank and file membership (PATCO had more than 85 percent of all air traffic controllers in its union), indispensability served at least two mobilization goals—first, to convince PATCO members that breaking their oath lacked risks that other federal or governmental unions might encounter; second, to express publicly the absolute necessity of PATCO’s service for continued air transportation and safety. Problematic to this argument was that PATCO viewed breaking an oath as not significantly dangerous to controllers’ indispensability. But it was not enough to make their case in negotiations whose offers would be turned down or with informational protests at terminals or with the orchestrated “sickouts” that resulted in air traffic slowdowns. A national strike would trumpet PATCO’s indispensability, for if the FAA attempted to continue air travel the risks to safety (from PATCO’s perspective) soared and would demand either a stop to all or most air traffic, negatively affecting cargo and passenger travel, or push the FAA into the unknown territory of opening the skies and risking major air traffic crashes. PATCO was sure of all of these scenarios. And what is critical here is that indispensability—a byproduct of the performativity of the affidavit—drove PATCO to an “extreme communicative act,” namely being the first public sector union to break the law and bravely picket terminals. As Wee points out about “extreme communicative acts,” they possess the non-linguistic force that comes with life-threatening acts and/or fatalities (2163). In both of these senses, PATCO’s strike fits. Lifethreatening acts may be associated only with “hunger strikes” or “self-immolation,” but it can be argued that it is equally life-threatening to put one’s entire career on the line, sometimes called “career suicide.” In terms of fatalities, PATCO en masse vacated the air towers to new trainees and inexperienced substitutes, raising the chances of air accidents exponentially. If the FAA had Bailes 20 not reduced national air travel by half and found able military controllers, the situation of the strike would certainly have had a different outcome. Clearly, the question of whether PATCO had an essential and necessary place in America’s air economy was answered by the consequences, but not necessarily by the strike itself. PATCO’s action as such was as extreme a telos that could be expected, short of violence. Even other labor groups were stunned by PATCO’s audacity. As McCartin’s narrative shows, PATCO leaders were sure Reagan would not fire more than ten thousand skilled specialists that the government had spent hundreds of millions of dollars and many years to train— not when they were seeking only improved working conditions and fair compensation after years of seeing their salaries lag behind inflation, and when dismissing them would ultimately be far more costly than meeting their demands. (7). Reagan’s Pledge to PATCO & His Appeal to Oath-Breaking in the PATCO Speech Considering PATCO’s job actions and court injunctions, there seems to be a clear precedence for President Ronald Reagan’s “line in the sand” speech on August 3, 1981. But there was also a precedent (albeit less binding) for almost all of PATCO’s strikers to stay on the picket lines after Reagan’s ultimatum, which strikers viewed as a “bluff” because Reagan had made a pledge in writing to PATCO “when the campaign of Republican Ronald Reagan came looking for unions to join its electoral coalition” in 1980 (McCartin 242-243). Then Republican nominee for President, Ronald Reagan, made the pledge in writing to Robert E. Poli, President of PATCO, on October 20, 1980, just short of a year before Reagan fired and legally prosecuted the PATCO strikers. Because of limited space, I do not cite the entire letter here, but only key excerpts that are relevant to understanding Reagan’s pledge, with the pledge part italicized: Bailes 21 I have been thoroughly briefed by members of my staff as to the deplorable state of our nation’s air traffic control system. They have told me that too few people working unreasonable hours with obsolete equipment has placed the nation’s air travelers in unwarranted danger. In an area so clearly related to public safety the Carter administration has failed to act responsibly. You can rest assured that if I am elected President, I will take whatever steps are necessary to provide our air traffic controllers with the most modern equipment available and to adjust staff levels and work days so that they are commensurate with achieving a maximum degree of public safety. . . . I pledge to you that my administration will work very closely with you to bring about a spirit of cooperation between the President and air traffic controllers. Such harmony can and must exist if we are to restore the people’s confidence in their government. Sincerely, Ronald Reagan. Here we have the campaign pledge, not an oath. History shows that from PATCO’s perspective, Reagan appointed “union-busting agents” in the FAA and then turned on PATCO himself with an ultimatum that he acted upon. Why else did so many PATCO strikers believe Reagan was bluffing when he gave them 48 hours to return to work? Was the pledge a lie? The main condition in the pledge for gaining full support from Reagan was Reagan’s election as President. Reagan was elected President. So Reagan, from PATCO’s viewpoint, should have worked with the union. At this point, maybe it is important to consider how this pledge’s performativity operates. Obviously, it is much closer to pirates than to the bonus vir. Cicero says that “it is lawful not to observe an oath with pirates, with whom, as hostes omnium [enemies of all], it is not possible to have a common trust” (Agamben 23). Perhaps this characterization of Reagan is Bailes 22 going too far, but is it? Comparing Reagan’s pledge with his 1981 PATCO ultimatum, one may note immediately that the same conditions remain. Here’s part of that August 3, 1981, speech: This morning at 7 a.m. the union representing those who man America's air traffic control facilities called a strike. This was the culmination of 7 months of negotiations between the Federal Aviation Administration and the union. At one point in these negotiations agreement was reached and signed by both sides, granting a $40 million increase in salaries and benefits. This is twice what other government employees can expect. It was granted in recognition of the difficulties inherent in the work these people perform. Now, however, the union demands are 17 times what had been agreed to -- $681 million. This would impose a tax burden on their fellow citizens which is unacceptable.I would like to thank the supervisors and controllers who are on the job today, helping to get the nation’s air system operating safely. In the New York area, for example, four supervisors were scheduled to report for work, and 17 additionally volunteered. At National Airport a traffic controller told a newsperson he had resigned from the union and reported to work because, “How can I ask my kids to obey the law if I don’t?” This is a great tribute to America. . . . [W]e cannot compare labor-management relations in the private sector with government. Government cannot close down the assembly line. It has to provide without interruption the protective services which are government’s reason for being. . . . Congress passed a law forbidding strikes by government employees against the public safety. Let me read the solemn oath taken by each of these employees, a sworn affidavit, when they accepted their jobs: “I am not participating in any strike against the Government Bailes 23 of the United States or any agency thereof, and I will not participate while an employee of the Government of the United States or any agency thereof.” It is for this reason that I must tell those who fail to report for duty this morning they are in violation of the law, and if they do not report for work within 48 hours, they have forfeited their jobs and will be terminated. (Reagan) Before analyzing the performativity of the speech act accusing PATCO strikers of oath-breaking, consider for a moment the organization of the speech. This speech is the paragon of conciseness and efficiency. It would be very difficult to find a line or phrase that is unnecessary. The arrangement follows a classical rhetorical scheme meant to mobilize the public and the media into supporting the President, so it lacks the exordium that would typically lead into or introduce the purpose. Instead, Reagan launches into the narratio by stating the facts combined with confirmatio by providing reasons that will used to make his case. As he does, he frames the strike as a “union” act by those who normally “man” the stations, suggesting that PATCO (consisting primarily of male war veterans) has have left their stations unmanned by striking. Continuing the narratio/confirmatio, Reagan historicizes the event as irrational and we hear one side of the process as he claims the government had taken pains to negotiate, provide a budget greater than what other agencies had been offered, and come to an agreement already, yet PATCO wanted more (17 times more). Also, here we see the smuggling of an argument using the code language of the overburdened taxpayer. Reagan provides more facts, praising “scabs,” who have crossed the picket lines, as law-abiding, hard-working Americans attempting to make America safe again (no mention at all the number of strikers on the picket lines, for that number of 14,000 on the picket lines stays hidden so as not to alarm the public). The news will do that. Some unstated purposes are to offer assurances to the public and to characterize the President as Bailes 24 a problem-solver. Reagan also expresses good will by showing that Americans will step up and help keep airports open and skies safe, as well as Americans are still plentiful who will not break the law. The part of the speech not excerpted here provides personal testimony that is eerily disarming since it is about Reagan’s own experience as a union leader for the Screen Actors’ Guild, identifying himself with PATCO while in the next step distancing himself by making a distinction between what private sector unions can do (they have the right to strike) and what public sector unions can do (they do not have the right to strike). In the last two paragraphs, Instead of a traditional conclusion, Reagan uses refutatio as he denies the legality of the strike and reads in the oath or affidavit, which has been doctored, to make not only the union aware of oath-breaking but also the public aware. He finishes with the ultimatum, again more of a refutatio with finality. The speech ends within three minutes, delivered in the Rose Garden at the White House. Now, finally, I will take up the performativity of oath-breaking within this speech. According to Agamben, Plutarch says that “to swear is first of all to curse, to curse oneself in the event that one says what is false or does not do what has been promised” (30). Clearly, Plutarch’s formula is an “unhappy” utterance no matter how one reads it. However, the paradox of already damning oneself before being damned for perjury or failure to keep a promise makes swearing an oath more reasonable. Otherwise, how can we take an oath and be honest with ourselves? In Reagan’s utilization of the affidavit, it seems obvious that the public is the target, perhaps along with the media. I make this claim because I do not believe affidavit is as critical as it will be in the courtroom. Reading this doctored version of the affidavit into the record, however, elevated the oath-breaking to a nationalistic mythic level. Whether Reagan or one of his advisors decided that he read the affidavit or not, this speech act made audible the fact that taking an oath is “to curse oneself,” turning the strike into the very blasphemy PATCO Bailes 25 wanted to express without the affidavit. But PATCO could not curse the government fast enough (lacking the proper public relations strategy) as the union fell behind the overwhelming support for the President. For PATCO, there could be no compromise, more reason for understanding that the performativity of the strike was meant to carry heavy illocutionary force. Was the strike a doubling down on a malediction against the federal government? It is not surprising that war veterans would respond this way, especially given the sourness about the Vietnam War. According to McCartin, “Between 1972 and 1977, PATCO emerged as the most militant, most densely organized union in any bargaining unit of the nation’s largest employer, U.S. government” (145). Could this militancy explain why the Reagan Administration acted with such harshness? The oath was turned into a curse for PATCO and the union chose to ignore it, believing in indispensability. But the public chose not to side with the union, following and supporting Reagan in what became a “game changer” for his presidency. The appeal to oathaffidavit solemnity elevated Reagan’s status even though the President would vigorously support a national strike (Polish) against a government (Communist) he did not like. Conclusion—Loss of Oaths, Social Contract? Speech act theory can break new ground in seeing linguistic expression in more than true-false values. Language can be used as ritual or convention to perform an act. In this sense, the oath that Reagan quoted into his speech and also the pledge he made to PATCO all speak to the community in which those acts took place. One wants to call Reagan’s use of the affidavit against the union a ruse because of the political expediency Reagan seemed capable of in making and then breaking a pledge himself. Given a more pessimistic view, how do we make an oath or a pledge mean anything if its ambit is the narrow purpose of power and profit? Perhaps Agamben Bailes 26 is right to identify a crisis in which “the very being of man as a political animal is at stake” and the social contract is at risk because of an “irreversible decline of the oath in our time” (1). Bailes 27 Works Cited Agamben, Giorgio. The Sacrament of Language: An Archaeology of the Oath (Homo Sacer II, 3). Trans. by Adam Kotsko. Palo Alto, California: Stanford University Press, 2011. Austin, J. L. How To Do Things With Words. Ed. By J. O. Urmson and Marina Sbisá. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1975. “A Brief History of the FAA.” Federal Aviation Adminstration. 1 Feb. 2010. Web 1 Dec. 2013. Conway, Erik M. Blind Landings: Low-Invisibility Operations in American Aviation, 1918-1958 Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. 5 USC § 3331—Oath of Office.” Legal Information Institute. Cornell University Law School. n.d. Web 6 Dec. 2013. “5 USC § 7311—Loyalty and striking.” Legal Information Institute. Cornell University Law School. n.d. Web 6 Dec. 2013. Richard B. Freeman, Casey Ichniowski, and Jeffrey Zax “Collective Organization of Labor in the Public Sector.” When Public Sector Workers Unionize. Ed. By Richard B. Freeman and Casey Ichniowski. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. “In Showdown with Air Traffic Controllers, the Public Sided with Reagan.” Pew Research Center. 22 Feb. 2011. Web 8 Dec. 2013. Kaburise, Phyllis. Speech Act Theory and Communication: A Univen Study. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011. Kendrick, Oliver. “Coming to Terms with the Past: My Lai.” History Today 56.2: 2006. Mayo, Anthony J., Nitin Nohria, and Mark Rennella. What the Airline Industry Can Teach Us about Leadership. New York: Palgrave, 2009. McCartin, Joseph A. Collision Course: Ronald Reagan, the Air Traffic Controllers, and the Bailes 28 Strike That Changed America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Murphy, John J. “Striking in the Federal Sector: An Update on the Law.” The American University Law Review 35: 929-962. Murray, R. Emmett. Lexicon of Labor. New York: The New Press, 2010. Nordlund, Willis J. Silent Skies: The Air Traffic Controllers’ Strike. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1998. “Oath of Office.” History, Art & Archives: United States House of Representatives. n.d. Web. 8 Dec. 2013. Shostak, Arthur B. and David Skocik. The Air Controllers’ Controversy: Lessons from the PATCO Strike. New York: Human Sciences Press, 1986. Wee, Lionel. “‘Extreme communicative acts’ and the boosting of illocutionary force.” Journal of Pragmatics 36: 2006. 2161-2178.