Narrative:

I reported to work to learn that all air traffic controllers at ZJX were now required to have an absolute minimum of 5.5 hours of time on position each day. I asked the reason and was told that under our new contract effective october 1; 2009; article 108; concerning pay and facility levels; took time on position into account in determining facility levels within the FAA and thus affected pay. I found this was a fabricated excuse put forth by our management to both scare us into obeying this ridiculous and arbitrary new requirement; and to make it look as though our new contract was to blame for our situation. Later I was told that the reason for the 5.5 hour requirement was because if our time on position (top) is too low; then we will lose trainee slots in upcoming fiscal years. This kind of seemed like padding the numbers and decieving the department of transportation into giving us more trainees than we need. To make matters worse; I called friends at several other ATC facilities; only to find that ZJX was the only facility in the country executing this plan. Regardless of the quesionable ethics behind this latest knee jerk reaction from our local management at jacksonville center; the issue I have with it is that it has resulted in a lower margin of safety for the flying public. As a part of this new initiative; we now staff d-sides at sectors where they are not warranted by the traffic levels and we likewise open radar sectors when there are no aircraft in the sector and often times none in the uret; which project 20 minutes into the future for traffic that will be entering the sector. Computer based instruction courses talk about controller work load as it relates to controller performance. It talked about a 'zone' called the pro zone where workload was at a level that kept the controller alert and focused on the task at hand. This pro zone fell it a range of about 60%-90% of controller attention. Higher than 90% and performance fell off because of overload and lower than 60% and performance fell of because of lack of attention. This area below 60% was called the flat zone and this is where the majority off operational errors occur we were told. I took this to mean that the FAA understood the dangers of lack of attention due to inappropriate staffing of sectors based on the present traffic. The point I am making is that with controllers now forced to sit for 2 hours at a time on front of empty scopes; their attention is everywhere but where is should be and that is on the traffic; and the lives they have in their hands. While; it is our responsibility to uphold our oath to protect these lives; the FAA's practice of forcing us to sit up to the 2 hour limit on position with no traffic just to defraud the government of more trainees so we can continue to be overstaffed is not helping the siituation one bit.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: ZJX controller voiced concern regarding a new facility policy/procedure that maximizes time on position; claiming policy is detrimental to controller performance.

Narrative: I reported to work to learn that all air traffic controllers at ZJX were now required to have an absolute minimum of 5.5 hours of time on position each day. I asked the reason and was told that under our new contract effective October 1; 2009; article 108; concerning pay and facility levels; took time on position into account in determining facility levels within the FAA and thus affected pay. I found this was a fabricated excuse put forth by our management to both scare us into obeying this ridiculous and arbitrary new requirement; and to make it look as though our new contract was to blame for our situation. Later I was told that the reason for the 5.5 hour requirement was because if our Time on Position (TOP) is too low; then we will lose trainee slots in upcoming fiscal years. This kind of seemed like padding the numbers and decieving the Department of Transportation into giving us more trainees than we need. To make matters worse; I called friends at several other ATC facilities; only to find that ZJX was the only facility in the country executing this plan. Regardless of the quesionable ethics behind this latest knee jerk reaction from our local management at Jacksonville Center; the issue I have with it is that it has resulted in a lower margin of safety for the flying public. As a part of this new initiative; we now staff D-sides at sectors where they are not warranted by the traffic levels and we likewise open Radar sectors when there are no aircraft in the sector and often times none in the URET; which project 20 minutes into the future for traffic that will be entering the sector. Computer based instruction courses talk about controller work load as it relates to controller performance. It talked about a 'zone' called the pro zone where workload was at a level that kept the controller alert and focused on the task at hand. This pro zone fell it a range of about 60%-90% of controller attention. Higher than 90% and performance fell off because of overload and lower than 60% and performance fell of because of lack of attention. This area below 60% was called the flat zone and this is where the majority off operational errors occur we were told. I took this to mean that the FAA understood the dangers of lack of attention due to inappropriate staffing of sectors based on the present traffic. The point I am making is that with controllers now forced to sit for 2 hours at a time on front of empty scopes; their attention is everywhere but where is should be and that is on the traffic; and the lives they have in their hands. While; it is our responsibility to uphold our oath to protect these lives; the FAA's practice of forcing us to sit up to the 2 hour limit on position with no traffic just to defraud the government of more trainees so we can continue to be overstaffed is not helping the siituation one bit.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of April 2012 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.