Union Lobbies for Easier Air Traffic Controller Test, Helps Members Cheat Anyway
Fox News host Tucker Carlson has been doggedly pursuing a developing scandal that occurred in the Federal Aviation Administration during the administration of former President Barack Obama.
That scandal centers around air traffic controllers, specifically the lowering of standards for screening and testing used to hire new air traffic controllers, all in the name of diversity.
That digging by Carlson, as well as by the media outlet he founded, The Daily Caller, has now revealed the scandal went beyond simply lowering standards so less-qualified minority individuals could be hired, but may have also involved cheating on behalf of those minority individuals to ensure they were hired.
A 2016 report from the Department of Transportation Office of Inspector General documented how a powerful union provided test questions and answers to certain prospective air traffic controllers prior to their taking the examination for employment.
https://twitter.com/PfeifferDC/status/1006974556882571264
That union would be the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees, and they reportedly informed potential members how to answer the questions on the exam in a teleconference.
During that teleconference, union members took the time to walk others through the various biographical questions that had been added to the exam and informed them on how best to answer so they could be hired.
“According to (redacted) the members told (redacted) some of the questions they posed were either taken from the … test or were questions they were told were on the test,” the DOT-OIG report stated.
Witnesses reportedly confirmed to investigators that they had been told which answers to mark on their tests in order to pass.
As previously noted, prior to sharing exam questions and answers with potential new hires, the union had first lobbied for the inclusion of certain biographical questions on the air traffic controller application exam that had literally nothing to do with controlling air traffic.
Worse than that, the exam was reportedly also restructured in such a way as to penalize individuals with actual experience in aviation, such as military air traffic controllers and pilots, and granted extra credit to applicants without such experience who happened to be minorities –again, all in the pursuit of greater “diversity.”
“It’s not a screening test. It actually turned out the scoring group could actually penalize people with aviation experience — pilots, air traffic controllers,” aviation attorney Michael Pearson said during an interview Tuesday with Carlson.
“And then to make it worse, they had folks stand in line for this test, that somebody in the NBCFAE had apparently got the answers to and coached other people how to pass the test,” Pearson added.
Incredibly, the IG report which uncovered the union had helped applicants cheat on their exam did not recommend anybody for criminal prosecution, even though cheating on a federal employment examination is listed as a federal crime.
To be sure, there is nothing inherently wrong with a desire to have a more diverse workforce, provided those diverse employees are qualified and capable of doing the job they were hired to do as opposed to unqualified and incapable individuals put in place by way of affirmative action.
In truth, this whole scandal is nothing more than another example of how unions tend to be corrupt and, at least in this case, willing to place the lives of American citizens at risk by hiring subpar applicants to perform a life-and-death job for which they are unqualified simply to fill their ranks with more diversity.
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