lt’s possible for everyone to make a lot of “good news-bad news” jokes about the air traffic con-V trollers’ walkout. The bad news is that airlines initially are going to lose money, and for some time. they will have less passenger carrying capacity and less incentive to try for new markets. The bad news also is that until the government can hire and train new air controllers to replace the more than 15,000 who were fired when they failed to meet President Reagan’s back-to-work deadline. air travelers will have to content themselves with fewer flights with more stops. a narrower selection of departure times, and higher fares. ‘ The good news is we have a president in the White House who is gutsy. decisive and willing to do whatever has to be done to see that he achieves the goals he set for this nation. Firing the controllers really was the only decision he could make. The law forbids federal employees from striking. He gave the striking controllers fair waming and ample time to go back to work before he carried out the law. But in recent years. we have had presidents whose decisions reflected either common sense or adherence to the law. The further good news is that because the president enforced the law. federal employee unions are on notice that they will not be able to whipsaw the government into violating the law and entering into outlandish. inflationfeeding labor agreements. The Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization 1PATCO) would have done well to stick with its original acceptance of the raise originally offered it which would have been twice what any other federal employee could have expected. A good many struggling Utahns would like to make the $15,000 to $49,000 a year the controllers were making even before the strike. Sure, the controllers have to put up with a great deal of stress, pressure and life-and-death decision making. So do police officers, nurses. firefighters, military personnel and many others who have equal or greater training and responsibility and far less compensation. The good news is that perhaps we finally have a sense of balance returning to U.S. labor relations, a balance in which compensation will be more a function of productivity, dedication and quality of work product than of sheer, coercive power to get more for doing less and doing it less effectively. In short, the bad news as it has been and will be with so much of what President Reagan is doing – is that a lot of us will have to endure some hardship and inconvenience in the coming months. But the good news is that if we stick with it, we are going to come out with some lasting solutions to some long-festering problems