Frankfurt Chaos reigns at German airports this summer. There is not only a lack of staff at the counters and for the luggage, but also for the security checks. The situation is unlikely to improve anytime soon. Apparently, in order to save money on the required training, the companies mainly rely on unemployed applicants when recruiting new inspectors.
The expert responsible for the Verdi union in Hesse, Guido Jurock, estimates that several hundred air security assistants are missing at Frankfurt Airport. Employed by security service providers, they take over the passenger controls at the airports under the supervision of the federal police.
Jurock identifies the cost pressure from the privatization of control tasks as the main cause of the misery. In Munich, where a national company is responsible for the controls, there is no shortage of staff.
The President of the Federal Association of Aviation Security Companies (BDLS), Udo Hansen, presents it differently. According to Hansen, there are enough control staff under contract for regular operations. Problems resulted mainly from the increased sick leave and from the fact that there were often unforeseen changes in the number of passengers at the security checkpoints due to the lack of personnel in the entire airport operation. But the truth is more complicated.
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If you want to work as a flight safety assistant, you have to complete at least 264 compulsory hours of training and pass an exam. Most fail on the first try, reports Jurock. Anyone who makes it can earn around 20 euros per hour, depending on the federal state, but usually only part-time and in shift work.
High training costs and high failure rates
The training, which is said to cost several thousand euros, and the high failure rate are a problem for the security companies. In the past, most seem to have relied on finding enough unemployed candidates to receive training and subsistence funding from the Federal Employment Agency or job center during this time. Jurock suspects that there might even be an additional profit to be made from this, but in any case it didn’t cost the employer anything.
Flight safety assistant training costs several thousand euros.
(Photo: IMAGO/Rolf Kremming)
Jurock’s colleague Roberto Di Benedetti, who is responsible for Stuttgart Airport, confirms: “In the past, one could get the impression that some companies were more interested in earning money with state-funded training than in building up long-term aviation security personnel.”
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Apparently, it was normal for the taxpayer to pay for the expensive training of the security checkpoint staff, thus subsidizing the low fares. But now that the increasing air traffic is being met by a workforce that has been severely thinned out during the pandemic and many other employers are also scrambling for free workers, this no longer works.
But the companies that have been awarded the contract by the federal police to carry out controls in an airport area with particularly low prices are apparently finding it difficult to adapt their business model to the new circumstances.
Offer only for unemployed
Anyone who asks about a job advertisement by the training company Gaetan Data for the company Securitas Aviation at Berlin/Brandenburg Airport whether the costs of any necessary training will be covered by the employer will find out: “The course lasts four to five months with the prescribed reliability and safety test . The offer is aimed in particular at applicants who are currently registered as looking for work and who are eligible for an education voucher through a job center, employment agency or other funding provider.” The website of the large training company Gate Aviation reads something similar.
When asked, Gaetan replied to the Handelsblatt that the long period of up to five months was due to the fact that the prescribed reliability check lasted eight to twelve weeks and parts of the training could only take place afterwards. Slow mills in some state bureaucracies apparently also contribute to the problem.
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Securitas, the German branch of a Swedish security company, replied that in addition to such training models for job seekers in cooperation with training providers, they also have dual training for job changers with remuneration.
The Verdi people Jurock and Di Benedetti confirm that employers now assume costs at least on a case-by-case basis. But while baggage handlers, for example, offer a welcome fee of 1,000 euros as a rule, the security companies are reluctant to promise that they will cover the costs of the training and pay for the training time. They may shy away from the risk that the employment agency and job center would then no longer issue training vouchers.
The great silence
The topic is apparently so sensitive that the aviation security companies concerned and the federal police do not want to comment. A spokesman for the federal police at Hamburg Airport did not want to provide any information on failure rates during the test. The spokesman referred to FraSec, a subsidiary of the Frankfurt airport operator Fraport AG, for the question of whether the security company commissioned by the federal police had enough staff to provide inspectors as requested by the federal police.
The information comes from FraSec that the spokesman is traveling and currently has no time for inquiries. For this reason, FraSec did not comment on whether the recruitment of inspection staff still to be trained was limited to unemployed people with training vouchers. A spokesman for i-Sec, another heavyweight in the industry, declined to comment publicly.
The federal police did not want to provide any information on the failure rates.
(Photo: dpa)
The Federal Employment Agency replied to the question of whether the concern that no more training vouchers would be issued if the employer offered the prospect of assumption of costs, that one could not give a general answer because the further training of the unemployed was decided individually, depending on whether one considers the promotion to be necessary to avoid unemployment.
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The BDLS President confirms that training vouchers are an important option for financing training, albeit with decreasing importance. They are an opportunity to enable job-seekers to re-enter the labor market. However, part-time or dual qualifications are now being offered more often.
Which financing model is used “of course also depends on the applicants and their current employment situation”. If applicants are recruited directly, i.e. not through a training company, “they receive training contracts with corresponding remuneration agreements”.
It is often not even made transparent in the advertisements that prior training is necessary, for example in the case of a current FraSec tender.
A common procedure seems to be like this: the security companies advertise positions both directly and indirectly via training companies. If unemployed people register with the prospect of an education voucher, they are referred to the training companies, and the security company can agree on individual cost assumptions and remuneration with other candidates.
The provincial airports of Münster/Osnabrück and Frankfurt/Hahn show that there is another way. According to the tender, FMO Security Services GmbH already offers payment during the training for Münster. When asked, Hahn provided the information that the training costs are paid by the employer, but that the applicant is not yet paid during this time.
More: Poor customer service: Lufthansa has to give up the fifth star.