Assume that our workers are making $35/hr in base pay, time and a half
in overtime, and $15k per year in benefits.

If you have 3 people working full time, the cost at 2000 hrs per yer
is $255k.

That's not the cost, that's what the employee gets. It costs the
employer more. A factor of two more is what I've heard in the past.

Overhead is the same no matter how many employee hours you have. It
doesn't go up with overtime, but it doesn't go down with reduced heads
either. The air conditioning, for example.

Depends if you need more facilities. But support staff should be
included too, that goes up with number of heads. In any case at this
point I'm more or less guessing, since I don't work at ATC and don't
know what their actual situation is. And perhaps "overhead" (as in
office space and electricity) may not be what I'm trying to refer to.

It is POSSIBLE to save money by having people work OT instead of
hiring new heads. Of course it's done for short term bubbles of
demand, but it's very rare and difficult to do as a normal way of
doing business.

Maybe that's what they're doing.

Jose
--
There are two kinds of people in the world. Those that just want to
know what button to push, and those that want to know what happens when
they push the button.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.