Also in the second weekend of the May holiday, travelers had to wait for hours at Schiphol. ‘Across the board’ there is too little staff: the flex workers who saw their employment conditions deteriorate for a long time have left. “Wage increases are inevitable.”
The lengthy queues at Schiphol are the manifestation of a new phenomenon on the labor market. Poorly paid flex workers finally dare to raise their middle finger at their stingy employers. For years, workers with little education had to powerlessly accept that employers would erode their working conditions. Airlines and airports increasingly outsourced work to subcontractors who are in fierce competition with each other. Consumers want a cheap flight holiday and that is at the expense of the workers at the bottom of the labor ladder: suitcase porters and security guards.
In the second weekend of the May holiday, Schiphol was once again very busy. Dutch holidaymakers stood in line for hours on Saturday and Sunday for the detection gates and the control of hand luggage. There was not enough staff available to handle the passenger flow.
Schiphol is struggling ‘across the board’ with a poignant staff shortage, an airport spokesperson admits. ‘That ranges from security guards, military police, crew of the check-in desks, baggage handlers to parking attendants.’ The largest user of Schiphol, airline KLM, is diligently looking for a hundred new apron employees (people who load and unload aircraft and push them to the taxiway).
Schiphol can do little about the staff shortage at KLM and other airlines, but the airport itself is responsible for deploying sufficient security personnel. Schiphol has five hundred vacancies at a desired workforce of five thousand. The shortage of security personnel to carry out hand luggage and passenger checks was the main cause of the long queues this weekend.
‘Schiphol should have anticipated better’
Frank Oostdam, director of the travel umbrella organization ANVR, accuses Schiphol of ‘bad planning’. ‘The travel organizations already saw this crowds coming in January. The number of bookings for the May holiday then increased rapidly. You can book a holiday by plane months in advance, so Schiphol should have anticipated better.’ The airport spokesperson responds with: ‘Of course we anticipated. We’ve done our best recently to recruit enough staff, but we just haven’t been able to do that.’ The spokeswoman points to the tight labor market as the cause. ‘There are also major staff shortages in other industries: the catering industry, construction, healthcare, you name it.’
Union director Herrie Hoogenboom thinks that is a weak excuse. ‘Schiphol invokes force majeure, but why force majeure? You better start paying. Then the work will automatically become attractive again.’ The FNV director represents the security guards who are in such a short supply. He saw the current staff shortage ‘coming miles away’, as there has been ‘anger and discontent’ among security personnel for a long time.
‘Security officers at Schiphol fall under the same collective labor agreement as people who guard an office, but the work at an airport is much harder. It’s hectic. You often have to deal with travelers who freak out and get angry and you often have to stand for hours in the crowd.’ Most Schiphol security officers work for subcontractors who pay little attention to specific schedule requirements, such as coordinating working hours at primary school and childcare. Many security guards have left in the past year. ‘As a result, the workload for those left behind has increased. This in turn leads to additional absenteeism due to illness, which further increases the workload for the others. This creates a negative spiral’, says Hoogenboom.
‘I think it is ultimately a matter of payment’
The same vicious circle of ever-increasing work pressure in combination with growing staff shortages occurs among platform workers and baggage handlers. The chaos in the first weekend of the May holiday was caused by a wild strike by 150 KLM platform employees. The luggage carriers stopped working for six hours on April 23 in protest at the planned outsourcing of ground staff to an outside handling company. The strikers fear layoffs and a deterioration of their working conditions.
Even the CEO of an aviation company shows understanding for such complaints. Steven van der Heijden, chairman of the board of Schiphol customer Corendon: ‘I think it is ultimately a matter of payment. Wage increases are inevitable in the long run, otherwise airlines will not be able to retain staff. Pushing suitcases out of a hold is bad for your back and knees. In a labor market with many alternatives, people no longer want that job.’
Van der Heijden says that Corendon, a provider of flying holidays to the sun, hires a handling company that pays its staff relatively well. ‘As a result, we were able to hire enough people for the spring and summer peaks. It is also annoying for us that other companies at Schiphol do not have their affairs in order.’
The shift in the balance of power between airport companies and their staff recently resulted in a much improved collective labor agreement for ground staff. The unions have reached an agreement with six subcontractors who handle baggage and passenger handling for several airlines. The average hourly wage will increase over the next three years from 11.80 to 14 euros per hour. From next year, employees will also receive a fixed irregularity allowance for night work and working on public holidays.
The Schiphol spokesperson does not comment on the question of whether the airport is prepared to increase the wages of the security guards as well, in order to remedy the staff shortage in that department. “The security companies have a separate collective labor agreement, which has already been concluded,” she reports by e-mail.
‘You can’t just open a can of security guards’
Even if Schiphol and the airlines were to raise wages sharply, the staff shortage would not be solved immediately. ‘You can’t just open a can of security guards,’ says Corendon CEO Van der Heijden. Before a new security guard can get started, he or she must first undergo a background check to obtain the required Certificate of Good Conduct. That process takes at least six weeks. After that, the security guard-to-be must undergo in-house training in crowd control and dealing with aggressive travelers.
Staff shortages also occur at other airports in Europe, including Zaventem (Brussels) and Heathrow (London). The British media have been paying a lot of attention in recent weeks to the long waiting times at London airport. As far as Schiphol is concerned, Van der Heijden and Oostdam are holding onto their hearts for the summer. From mid-July there will be another five to six peak weekends at Schiphol. There is no indication that the personnel problems will then be a thing of the past. Minister of Infrastructure Mark Harbers is also not reassured about this. ‘This cannot be solved one-two-three’, he tells the on Sunday afternoon ANP. “I’m keeping my finger on the pulse.”
The revenge of the squeezed flex worker is sweet. The aviation industry has been reaping the benefits of flexibilization for years, but is now experiencing its drawbacks for the first time. There was almost no flying during the corona pandemic. Aviation companies got rid of their flexible shell. Now that half of the Netherlands suddenly wants to go on a flying holiday again, these former Schiphol employees are sorely missed.
Schiphol cancellation request falls raw on the roof
Corendon and fellow holiday flyer TUI moved four holiday flights from Schiphol to Rotterdam this weekend. This happened at the request of Schiphol, which realized just before the weekend that there would be too few staff to handle the holiday crowds. The airport begged its customers to cancel as many flights as possible on Thursday evening and preferably not to take any more bookings for the second May holiday week. KLM was the only one to respond to this by canceling 75 flights. This is less inconvenient for the national pilot than for other airlines, because KLM operates by far the most flights of all Schiphol users. This makes it easier for travelers to book a flight that departs a few hours earlier or later.
Holiday flyers do not have that option, explains ANVR director Oostdam. ‘Travel companies have a less flexible schedule, with far fewer flights. Moreover, this often involves a hotel reservation. If you cancel such a flight, hundreds of people’s vacation will be ruined. Moreover, we also use these planes to pick up people who want to return to the Netherlands after their holiday.’
The request to cancel flights has gone down badly in the travel industry. Oostdam: ‘We have suffered unbelievably from the pandemic. Now that we can finally fly again and all signals are green, our travelers can’t get to the planes.’ Van der Heijden of Corendon finds Schiphol’s panicky last-minute request ‘bizarre’. ‘It is of course not normal to have to say to your customers a day in advance: ‘Sorry, your holiday is cancelled.’ But that was what Schiphol asked of us.’ Iata, the international trade association of airlines, calls the cancellation call from Amsterdam airport ‘scandalous’.