Air freight sector Schiphol is gloomy

Rats and mice sometimes roam in the canteen and toilets. The equipment used is very outdated. And several employees were seriously injured by unsafe situations on the platform, slaloming with thousands of kilos of cargo between the aircraft.

The work of the people who load and unload cargo planes at Schiphol is dangerous, unhealthy and unsafe. The survey recently conducted by trade union FNV this is clear among more than two hundred employees of cargo handling companies at the Amsterdam airport. Employees also said that they are regularly discriminated against because of origin or nationality.

“There is also a major problem when it comes to the safety culture of the handling companies,” says FNV director Jaap de Bie. “Only 15 percent of the respondents indicate that the rules for safe and healthy working are being observed. There is a broad feeling that executives do nothing with criticism of safety situations.” According to the union, one in ten employees has been involved in an incident involving physical injury or mental damage (burnout) in the past twelve months.

In March, the Human Environment and Transport Inspectorate (ILT) and the Labor Inspectorate already stated that the working conditions for ground staff at Schiphol leave much to be desired.

I am very concerned about whether I will reach the finish line in a good way

Harry Koolbergen Menzies Cargo employee

Together with several dozen employees of handling companies, the FNV presented the survey last week to Joost van Doesburg, director of cargo at Schiphol (and former campaign leader of the union at the airport). “I hear a lot that frightens me,” said Van Doesburg on the doorstep of the Schiphol office. “No one should get sick from the work he does here.”

Finish line

That is precisely one of the fears of employees of cargo handling companies. “I am very concerned about whether I will reach the finish line in a good way,” says Harry Koolbergen. He has been working for Menzies Cargo for 35 years, one of the four cargo handlers at the Amsterdam airport. “After a day’s work, I have pain all over. I no longer have the energy to walk the dog or play with my grandchildren.”

According to employees and the trade union, the problems in cargo handling – and in the entire ground operation at Schiphol – cannot be seen separately from the cutthroat competition. As with the loading and unloading of suitcases and the check-in of passengers, according to the FNV, there has been a “deliberately created race down” for years.

Competition at Schiphol has been intensified to the maximum, according to FNV director De Bie, which means that there is permanent pressure on costs. “As a result, the rates for freight handling in Amsterdam are among the lowest in Europe, according to experts. Due to the cost pressure, staff are then cut back.” The employees say their companies have dozens of vacancies.

Limited shelf life

Cargo handling is a relatively small sector at Schiphol. The four handlers – Menzies, Dnata, Swissport and WFS – employ 1,750 people. They load and unload the aircraft and temporarily store the cargo in warehouses. That cargo is transported with cargo planes (full freighters) or in the hold of passenger aircraft. In particular, perishable goods are transported – flowers or medicines, for example – or very expensive products – from smartphones to equipment from chip machine manufacturer ASML.

The number of cargo flights at Schiphol is also small: 2 to 4 percent of the total number slots (take-off and landing fees) is for cargo. The rest is for passenger aircraft.

However, the economic value of air freight is much greater than the small number of slots suggests. According to the Amsterdam bureau for economic research Decisio (2019), air freight is good for approximately 25 percent of the employment and added value directly related to Schiphol. Trade organization Air Cargo Netherlands (ACN) estimates the economic contribution of air freight 2.5 billion euros per year.

Business climate

Will it stay that way? The position of air freight at Schiphol is under great pressure, warns director Maarten van As of the ACN trade association. “Schiphol is in danger of losing its important position as a freight hub. That damages the business climate and is very annoying for companies in the Netherlands that do business internationally.”

Read also: Schiphol Airport has to shrink and that is for the first time

This is not only due to staff shortages and poor working conditions at the cargo handlers. Van As particularly criticizes the government’s decision to reduce Schiphol from 500,000 to 440,000 flights per year. The court ruled that the first step taken by Minister Mark Harbers (Infrastructure and Water Management, VVD) was unlawful, but the state is appealing. That case is expected to be heard in June.

The planned contraction will hit air freight harder than passenger flights, says Van As. “In practice, cargo flights have more difficulty than passenger flights in using their slots enough to keep them.”

This is due to international slot rules. If airlines make insufficient use of their take-off and landing rights, they lose them. Air freight is a much more irregular industry than passenger transport; not every flight takes place (on time). “With increasing scarcity at Schiphol, cargo flights run the risk of being pushed out of the market,” Van As fears.

ACN previously expected that the 12 percent reduction envisaged by the cabinet would lead to 30 percent fewer cargo flights at Schiphol. Based on new research that has yet to be published, the organization is now taking into account a reduction of no less than 60 percent. “For a number of airlines, the cargo operation is becoming too small and too uncertain,” says Van As. “There has been a shortage of slots for cargo planes for years – and this is the last straw.”

In addition, he thinks that airlines that have both passenger and freighter aircraft in their fleet may choose to use cargo slots for passengers in the event of a contraction. This can be economically more advantageous for an airline. Cargo handling company Dnata, part of the Emirates airline, would reconsider its investments in new cargo facilities at Schiphol if the contraction becomes a reality. This was stated by the Dutch director earlier this year in the trade press.

Apart from the planned contraction at Schiphol, air freight is also struggling. The golden times of the corona crisis are over; due to the prolonged lockdowns, the standstill of passenger traffic and the problems in maritime transport, many companies then opted for air transport.

At the end of 2021 you paid 8 dollars per kilo on a cargo flight from Hong Kong to Europe (source: Baltic Exchange Air Freight Index). Before Covid-19 that was 3 dollars per kilo, now the rate is around 4 dollars.

Read also: After the container scarcity, there is now a threat of a surplus. In Shanghai, the empty container boxes are piling up

The decrease is partly due to the fact that container transport by ship has become cheaper. There is also overcapacity in air freight worldwide: more passenger aircraft are flying again, which can carry more cargo in their hold, also to and from Asia, which has been virtually ‘closed’ for a long time. The cargo hold of most passenger aircraft is less than 60 percent occupied. Air France-KLM reported a load factor of 47.1 percent for the first quarter of 2023.

Now fourth

In 2022, airlines transported 1.4 million tons of goods to or from Schiphol, according to this the Central Bureau of Statistics. That is 13.8 percent less than the year before. Maastricht Aachen Airport, the second largest airport in the Netherlands for cargo, processed 108,000 tonnes, 15.5 percent less than in 2021. In the first quarter of 2023, goods throughput at Amsterdam airport fell by another 9.3 percent. The number of cargo flights was 4,100, 22 percent less than in the first quarter of 2022.

Schiphol is now the fourth largest cargo airport in Europe, after Frankfurt (2 million tons), Paris Charles de Gaulle (1.89 million) and Leipzig-Halle (1.51 million). But Maarten van As fears that Schiphol will drop to sixth place – or lower.

This spring, Schiphol’s management announced that it wanted to retain and protect cargo by keeping 2.5 percent of the available take-off and landing rights available for it. “Freight provides a lot of employment in proportion and is valuable for the economy and business climate,” says the president Ruud Sondag of Schipholexplaining his broader package of plans to do the airport’s work “cleaner, quieter and better”.

The industry association ACN immediately stated that air freight needs many more slots for normal operations: 3 to 4 percent, or 15,000 to 20,000 flights. “Discussions about this with Schiphol and the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management are extremely difficult,” says ACN director Van As.

Nice words

Two other proposed measures by Schiphol affect cargo transport even more than civil aviation. For example, Ruud Sondag stated at the beginning of April that Schiphol wants to limit the number of older, noisy aircraft that are allowed to call at Amsterdam. Older Boeing 747s, popular with some cargo companies, will no longer be allowed to land there. The number of night flights will also be limited – to the delight of local residents and the chagrin of cargo carriers.

Another measure of Sunday’s cleaner, quieter and better package is that the terms and conditions of employment for ‘all people who work at the airport are good’. He wants higher pay in all sectors, better protection of all employees against the emission of harmful substances, an end to deadly competition in the handling market and improvement of working conditions for employees in (baggage) handling.

The airport management can now not stop at fine words, the FNV members stated last week on the steps of the Schiphol office. The union demands, among other things, a sector-wide collective labor agreement for the entire cargo handling, better agreements about working safely and more attention to the position of labor migrants.

A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of May 24, 2023.