In 2013, President Obama-appointed FAA Administrator Michael Huerta deemed that these hiring standards had not produced a pleasing mix of air traffic controllers when it came to race and sex. He announced plans to “transform the (FAA) into a more diverse and inclusive workplace that reflects, understands, and relates to the diverse customers” it serves. The FAA discarded its longtime use of the difficult cognitive assessment test and implemented instead a new, unmonitored take-home personality test — a biographical questionnaire. Among the questions asked are: “The number of high school sports I participated in was…” “How would you describe your ideal job?” “What has been the major cause of your failures?”
All air traffic control applicants are required to complete the biographical questionnaire. Those who “pass” are deemed eligible. The questionnaire gives more points to an applicant who answers that he has not been employed in the previous three years than it does to an applicant who answers that he has been a pilot or is a veteran with an air traffic control-related military background.
Michael Pearson, an air traffic controller for 27 years who is suing the FAA, said, “A group within the FAA, including the human resources function within the FAA — the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees — determined that the workforce was too white.” In an act of cowardice, a Republican-controlled Congress during President Obama’s second term cut a deal allowing the FAA to hire half of new controllers based on race.
Led by its president, William Perry Pendley, the Mountain States Legal Foundation has brought a discrimination suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on behalf of Andrew J. Brigida against U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao — although, when this suit began, Anthony Foxx was the secretary of transportation.
All Americans should hope that the Mountain States Legal Foundation suit is successful in preventing the FAA from using race and sex as criteria for hiring.
Writes for Creators Syndicate.
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