David Spero, president of the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists (PASS National) and a 35-year member of the organization, joined the America's Work Force Union Podcast to discuss the history of PASS National as the union approaches its 50th anniversary in 2027.
Spero traced the organization’s founding to a technician who was suspended for kicking in a door to put out a fire, while a controller received an award for the same action. Years of organizing followed, with founders driving across the country, sleeping in their cars and exhausting their vacation leave to sign up members. He addressed the union's response on 9/11, when PASS National’s president immediately suspended the collective bargaining agreement so members could focus entirely on securing facilities without worrying about grievances.
Finally, Spero discussed current Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) technical workforce shortfalls, the aviation safety inspector workforce whose numbers are down with no hiring plan in place and the threat of a government shutdown at the end of the federal fiscal year on Sept. 30.
Dave Spero has been part of the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists for 35 years, including five years as president and 18 years as a regional vice president. The organization he leads will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2027. Its founding story, as told by Howard Johansen, the first president, captures what drove workers to organize in ways that no abstract argument about union benefits can.
At a New York radar facility in 1977, Johansen and an air traffic controller saw smoke and kicked in a door to put out a fire. The controller received an award. Johansen received a suspension for kicking in the door. He decided it was time to form a union.
That decision was not simple to execute. The Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) focused solely on representing controllers and was not interested in representing the technical workforce. PASS National was organized through MEBA, the Marine Engineers' Beneficial Association, through which it maintains its AFL-CIO affiliation today. The founding members drove across the country in their own vehicles, slept in their cars, shared cheap hotel rooms and stood in the rain outside aviation facilities and training centers in Oklahoma City, handing out authorization cards. By Memorial Day each year, they had exhausted all their vacation leave and were taking unpaid time off to continue organizing. It took approximately eight years after the founding to win the first contract. Spero said the union owes everything to the people who made those sacrifices.
The union represents the workers who install, maintain, support and certify air traffic control systems and national defense equipment — the technical backbone of the aviation system. It also represents aviation safety inspectors who oversee the aviation industry. These are people whose work determines whether the aviation system functions safely day after day.
Spero drew a connection to the broader concern for worker safety across other industries. Nurses want safe staffing so patients are cared for. Construction workers want safe conditions, so they come home at the end of the day. PASS National members want adequate workforce levels, training time and working conditions that enable them to perform safety-critical work correctly. When any of those things are compromised, the consequences extend far beyond the workers themselves.
Spero was working as a technician in Tulsa, Okla., on the morning of September 11, 2001, preparing to drive to a remote site when the news broke. Like everyone else, he was glued to the screen. Unlike most people, he still had to go out and physically secure aviation facilities, not knowing which, if any, might be additional targets.
What PASS National did in those first hours reflects what a union can be when it is led well. President Mike Fanfalone immediately broadcast a message to the entire membership. Their collective bargaining agreement is temporarily suspended. Whatever needs to happen, make it happen. Do not worry about what is a grievance and what is not. Focus on the mission.
Spero said the union has never received the credit that the decision deserved. It made PASS National a genuine partner in the aviation system's response from the first hours of the worst day in American aviation history.
Five years into Spero's presidency, the picture of the FAA technical workforce is mixed. The overall bargaining unit is down approximately 700 employees, largely through early retirements and a reduction-in-force package. But a plan is in place to hire 750-800 new technicians, and some hiring has already begun. Spero gave the FAA credit for moving forward, but also acknowledged that congressional pressure helped force the issue. For the technical workforce, a path forward exists.
The aviation safety inspector workforce is a different story. Those staff numbers are also down, but no comparable workforce plan has been approved. Spero said the absence of a plan is deeply concerning. Aviation safety inspectors provide oversight of the aviation industry. When their numbers decline without a structured replacement pipeline, the consequences are not immediate but real.
He also expressed frustration at the agency's response to workforce and morale concerns. Rather than applying the tools in the collective bargaining agreement to address recruitment, retention and workplace conditions, the FAA has been conducting organizational health assessments — traveling to facilities and holding two-hour conversations about how things are going. Spero's response: ask the union. We can tell you exactly how things are going.
Next, Spero addressed the looming end of the federal fiscal year on Sept. 30 with cautious optimism and exhaustion. Members of Congress want to be in their districts campaigning throughout the election season, which creates a political incentive to get a continuing resolution done quickly and kick the hard decisions to December or into the new year. Spero said he is hopeful that is what happens.
What he is not willing to pretend is that any of this is acceptable as a permanent pattern. PASS National members and every other federal employee should be able to focus on their work. For his members, that is keeping the aviation system safe and ensuring taxpayers get value from the systems they maintain without spending part of every year wondering whether they will be paid. The shutdown cycle is exhausting, and the workforce deserves better.
Spero's Labor Day message was grounded in the same history he shared about PASS National’s founding. The rights that union workers have today — every one of them — were built by people who sacrificed to create them. The National Labor Relations Act, the protections won in the 1930s and 40s and 50s, the specific gains won by PASS National's founders, sleeping in their cars and burning through their leave by Memorial Day every year. None of it is permanent without vigilance.
In summary, he said we have to leave it better than we found it.
More information on the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists is available at passnational.org.
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