Dusseldorf The federal government’s recruitment program for Turkish airport ground staff is proving to be a failure. Instead of the originally planned 2,000 temporary workers, CDU tourism spokeswoman Anja Karliczek reports to the Handelsblatt from talks with the airport industry that only 100 to 200 have come so far. According to their information, there should be just 250 by mid-August.
Thomas Richter, head of the Employers’ Association of Ground Handling Service Providers in Aviation (ABL), told the Reuters news agency similar figures: “Around 150 employment contracts have been written.”
The first employees are expected to arrive this week, with the rest next week. Ultimately, however, only Munich and Nuremberg airports are interested in these “helping hands”, who are to work mainly in baggage handling until November 6th.
The handling problems still exist. “After the end of the holidays in North Rhine-Westphalia, there is a small dent in the number of passengers,” says Verdi expert Özay Tarim. “Nevertheless, yesterday morning in Düsseldorf there was a waiting time of around an hour before the security check.” The situation also remains critical in Cologne/Bonn and Stuttgart.
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At the beginning of June, aviation associations asked the federal government to temporarily and as unbureaucratically as possible recruit 2,000 workers abroad. They should alleviate the chaos at Germany’s airports, which was already apparent at the time in view of the renewed increase in passenger numbers after the Corona break.
Deadlines were not enough
However, it was not until a month later, on July 6th, that the Federal Ministries of the Interior, Labour/Social Affairs and Transport approved the simplified recruitment process. At the same time, they set a deadline of July 30 for airports and handling companies to submit the necessary documents.
air number
150
employment contracts
for helpers in ground handling have been written so far. Originally planned were 2000 additional forces.
The Federal Association of the German Aviation Industry (BDL) and the Airport Association ADV warned in vain that it would be almost impossible to submit documents for a visa, a background check and a security check within this short time, in which everyone who wants to work has to explain their whereabouts of the past ten years .
“A reliability check for German employees usually takes six to eight weeks,” says Özay Tarim from the Verdi service union. “In this way, many workers in Turkey had hopes of good pay in Germany, which were bound to be disappointed in the foreseeable future.”
BDL Managing Director Matthias von Randow gives another reason for the disappointing result of the campaign: “The limitation to three months has massively reduced the number of potential workers,” he believes.
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The flop had already indicated itself early on. At the beginning of July, the Employers’ Association of Ground Handling Service Providers in Air Transport (ABL) stated that the companies had requested fewer than 1,000 helpers instead of the planned 2,000.
“The federal government’s plan is a failure”
At the beginning of this week, the Frankfurt airport operator Fraport, which, in contrast to Düsseldorf, for example, employs the handling staff, said that it wanted to do without foreign aid completely. Fraport told the Hessischer Rundfunk that it was disappointed with the “existing qualifications” of the unskilled workers.
“Intensive discussions with the Turkish personnel service providers and detailed checks of the personnel documents sent have shown that the actual level of qualification is often well below our required minimum requirements,” said a Fraport spokesman. The Turkish applicants, who, according to several industry experts, are mainly employees of the insolvent Turkish airline Atlas Global, lack airport experience and German language skills.
“Intensive discussions with the Turkish personnel service providers and detailed checks of the personnel documents sent have shown that the actual level of qualification is often well below our required minimum requirements.” A spokesman for the airport company Fraport
No Turkish assistants from the program are deployed at Düsseldorf and Cologne/Bonn airports either, as the industry association ABL and an airport spokesman in Cologne confirmed. This also applies to the security company Securitas, which is based in Cologne.
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ABL Managing Director Richter also reports placement fees of 5,000 euros per worker, which cannot be paid given the short period of employment. The service provider Swissport, which works in Cologne/Bonn, explained that the personnel situation had “calmed down a bit”. All that was missing was “a handful of employees in a few areas”. Acciona in Düsseldorf left an inquiry from the Handelsblatt unanswered.
“The waiver of Fraport Airport shows that the federal government’s plan is a flop in terms of both time and content,” explained the CDU tourism expert Karliczek to the Handelsblatt. “Now it’s taking its revenge that the three Federal Ministers Nancy Faeser, Volker Wissing and Hubertus Heil ignored the problem for so long.”
According to the opposition politician, the federal government should have granted approval for the recruitment more quickly. The approval process was also designed much too late and too complicated. “Holidaymakers and air travelers still have to foot the bill,” she complains.
The CDU politician has now made another request to the federal government to obtain more information about the slow deployment of the promised workers in the field of ground handling service providers.
Karliczek points out that she had already called for the temporary exemption from tax liability for overtime worked by airport ground staff in the spring. “With this we would have achieved a noticeable relief of the situation at the airports without any bureaucracy.”
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