A different, and likely more productive, way of looking at a possible connection between PATCO firings and USAir 1493 is in the form of institutional knowledge lost.
I think a decent argument here is that the mass firing of a large portion of existing ATC personnel damaged the institutional knowledge and rigor of the ATC profession as a whole. What highly technical profession wouldn't be damaged by that? And this damage just increased the risk of serious mishap across the board; it suddenly became much more likely an ATC would make a mistake, and this one is one of those mistakes
I think a decent argument here is that the mass firing of a large portion of existing ATC personnel damaged the institutional knowledge and rigor of the ATC profession as a whole. What highly technical profession wouldn't be damaged by that? And this damage just increased the risk of serious mishap across the board; it suddenly became much more likely an ATC would make a mistake, and this one is one of those mistakes