Before anyone is too overcome with guilt after the recent spate of national media focus on the holiday plight of fired air traffic controllers, let’s keep a few pertinent facts in mind. Item: Before the Aug. 3 walkout by members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO), the starting salary for air controller trainees was $15,193 a year. The top pay grade was $49,229 a year. Although only a few controllers qualified for the top pay grade, many were making in the high 30s and low 40s through overtime and night pay differentials. Since average per capita income in the United States was slightly more than $8,000 in 1979, one could deduce that air controllers were relatively well-fixed, since they are required to have only a high school education. Item: The members of PATCO and all other federal employees are forbidden by law to strike. Some say that’s treating federal employees as second-class citizens “in comparison with private sector employees who do have the right to strike. But let’s not forget that private employers can raise prices to meet union wage demands, then take their chances in a competitive marketplace, and consumers cut off from one source of merchandise or service can turn to others, Government’s only way to meet wage demands is to raise taxes, and consumers cut off from governmentsupplied services by a strike can’t go to a competitor. Item: Although government employees sacrifice the right to strike. they also enjoy job security and a range of benefits far greater than most private sector employees have. Item: The union sought a $10,000-per-member, across-the-board, annual pay increase and a 35-hour work week. The government offered a $4,000-pen member, across-the-board annual raise, an increased night differential and timean-a-half for the final four hours of a 40-hour work week. The union executive board at first accepted that offer; then recanted, and the rank-and-file controllers rejected it. Item: The union since has wrapped itself in a cloak of altruistic concern for safety of the flying public but the union hasn’t explained where than concern might have been lurking when it reneged its initial acceptance of an offer that far exceeded the packages offered other federal employees. Nor has it explained such arrogant comments as this one from a Houston. Texas. controller early in the strike; “The reality is, we’re it. They have to deal with us.” Item; Controllers have made many legitimate claims about severe job stress at larger airports. and the federal government does need to address those concerns, but only 38 airports fall into the class where traffic is heaviest and job stresses most severe. The several hundred others in the country are less demanding and less stressful. If PATCO members who were fired from their jobs had a tough Christmas this year. they have only themselves or their misplaced faith in a highhanded union leadership to thank for it.