Exceptions give him pimples. Believing that “we must put an end to the special regulations concerning the retirement age for civil servants and quasi-civil servants, such as air traffic controllers”, Aargau national councilor Andreas Glarner (UDC) has just filed an interpellation so that the retirement age of air traffic controllers be raised from 60 to 65 years. He considers in fact that they benefit from preferential treatment thanks to taxpayers’ money, because, for him, “the retirement age must be 65 years old and this, for all”.
For Andreas Glarner, early retirement may still have been justified in the past. “But today, as people age healthier, that’s no longer the case. And if the controller can no longer work in front of his radar, there are enough other jobs behind the scenes or in training, where he can still be useful up to the age of 65.”
His colleague Matthias Jauslin (PLR/AG), also president of the Swiss Aero Club, deplores this intervention. “Strategically, it really doesn’t come at the right time,” he says. The elected official underlines that Skyguide services are currently facing a whole series of challenges, in particular succession problems among controllers. In addition, the retirement age of air traffic controllers has already been raised recently, in 2021, from 56 years to 60 years.
Although no one officially recognizes it, “20 minutesn” has learned that “desires to strike” are increasing considerably among Swiss controllers. However, this does not worry Andreas Glarner, who has already found the solution: “You just have to do like Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. When the American controllers went on strike, Reagan simply had the airspace controlled by the army. The strike ended immediately.”
