Reagan was too much of a pragmatist not to have the union's suggestions/demands reviewed and considered by his administration. It's extremely unlikely that he would reject them out of hand "because of bias."
Ah, interesting.
Reagan was too much of a pragmatist not to have the union's suggestions/demands reviewed and considered by his administration. It's extremely unlikely that he would reject them out of hand "because of bias."
How about the following POD:
10:08 PM, Friday, Feb. 20th 1981
Due to pilot error, dense fog, and a faulty anti-collision warning system [1],
Argentine Airlines Flight 342 slams into the North Tower of the World Trade
Center. The resulting fire causes the tower to collapse; the South Tower
remains standing, but is so badly damaged it ends up being demolished.
Lower Manhattan is cordoned off for nearly a year while this takes place.
PATCO votes to go on strike two weeks later. For years the FAA has been
ignoring complaints about faulty equipment and controller overwork, and
now a major disaster is the result. Reagan can't fire them without looking
like he's trying to punish whistleblowers, so he gives in to most of their
demands and fires some mid-level scapegoats at the FAA instead.
[1] In OTL, the warning system (which was constantly breaking down)
alerted controllers less than a minute before the plane would have hit the
building; visibility was only a few hundred yards in the fog, so the pilots
probably would not have seen the tower until it was too late.
Actually, the momentum from this would help Unions in other areas, and Reagan would also lose big political points, to say the least. Even if he's only a month in his presidency, he's the one that tried to fight the Unions so much.
Immediately, no. Later on? Yes. Again, this was a turning point for Unions. If they win, this would lead to Unions far more entrenched, and far harder for Reagan to deal with, as they would have more public support.
Reagan was savvier than that I think, he's not going to challenge the ATC at all. Heck there might not even be a strike in this case, and if there is it only gets hung up if the ATC's go absolutely nuts in their demands, which gives Reagan ammo in saying "I've adopted all their work and safety suggestions, but they are angling for X! (X being completely unrelated to safety) I can't agree to X."
It's one thing where a safety issue results in an absolute catastrophe as in this hypothetical and more mundane issues like wages and pensions. Like it or not the fact is fixed benefit pensions and other systems like it are an absolute money pit, and greater union membership / support leads to those systems failing or coming under pressure / scrutiny all that much quicker. Reagan can assault unions on those grounds, maybe not as strongly as OTL, but it's not out of the question that greater union entrenchment and support early on leads to greater union overreach later on for Reagan to hammer.
The key though is they have public support. Additionally, if Reagan raises a fuss, they'll say something like, "It's because of people like this that the North Tower fell." He may be charismatic and clever, but he isn't perfect.
If he only challanges wages all he does is say that it is because of the lax safety standards of the Carter Administration. Since he is only a month on the job JC is going to get the blame.
Is there a way where all the blame firmly lands of Reagan? Or is that basically not possible?
Reagan getting blamed less than a month into his Presidency is pretty much ASB in this hypothetical unless he completely FUBAR's things and further accidents happen, he'd be blamed much more for those, but this incident is much more a 'rude awakening' to a long standing problem than something sudden. The lion's share of the blame will be on Carter's shoulders, with probably stuff tracing back to Ford, Nixon and possibly LBJ.
With Reagan being as good a communicator as he is, even if he does eff things up worse it would have to be well into his term before people stop blaming Carter, kinda like how Obama is going to try and turn the 2012 race against him vs George Bush rather than the actual Rep candidate if said candidate is Mitt Romney...
With this POD, Carter will probably end up more hated than Nixon.