(New: Drr in the last paragraph)
BERLIN (dpa-AFX) – Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) does not expect the situation at the airports to improve anytime soon, with numerous flight cancellations and delays. “The situation in the European air traffic system is an enormous challenge for everyone,” Wissing told the “Bild am Sonntag”. The shortage of skilled workers is increasingly affecting people’s everyday lives. Short-term solutions are rather unlikely. The CSU traffic expert Ulrich Lange criticized Wissing sharply: “He can’t just duck away with a shrug and leave people alone with the traffic chaos that the traffic lights are partly to blame for.”
According to the deputy chairwoman of Verdi, Christine Behle, who is also deputy chairwoman of the Lufthansa supervisory board, the situation will only get worse. “Summer will be chaotic,” said Behle of the “Augsburger Allgemeine” (Monday). The cause is the forced European competition at airports and the associated savings in personnel costs of 30 to 40 percent through outsourcing and collective bargaining. The lockdown at the airports during the corona pandemic also led to short-time work and layoffs at service providers, and employees also looked for other jobs. This staff is now massively lacking, when the number of bookings is increasing significantly again. “It will be dramatic,” warned Behle.
The chairwoman of the Association of Independent Travel Agencies (VUSR), Marija Linnhoff, described the conditions at German airports as “simply unbelievable”. The desire to travel is not surprising, but two years of staff cuts are now a problem, she told the “Bild am Sonntag”. With the summer season approaching, the worst must be expected.
The airlines are defending themselves. “The governments decided at very short notice to lift the travel restrictions,” said Matthias von Randow, chief executive officer of the German Aviation Association (BDL). That is why there was no reliable plan for staffing for the resumption of traffic.
For weeks there have been massive problems at Germany’s airports due to a lack of staff in the industry. Lufthansa alone wants to cancel 900 flights in Munich and Frankfurt in July. “The most important thing in this situation is that more staff is quickly recruited and that services are provided by the airport companies themselves and that the employees are employed there,” demanded trade unionist Behle.
According to Verdi, the lack of staff in all service areas on the ground, such as security checks, check-in and baggage handling, is particularly affecting the major airports such as Frankfurt, Hamburg, Berlin and Düsseldorf. Munich also lacks staff, but the situation there is better because the security staff is not employed by a private company but by a state-owned company that pays according to the public service tariff.
FDP parliamentary group leader Christian Drr called on Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) to bring more federal police to airports “as soon as possible, so that the queues at the security checks” become shorter. And Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD) should ensure “that the ground service providers can hire people quickly and unbureaucratically – possibly with temporary contracts”. New staff from abroad would also be conceivable./hgo/DP/mis
Leverage must be between 2 and 20
No data