The number of overtime hours has increased drastically among civil servants working at German airports. This emerges from a response from the Federal Ministry of the Interior to a request from the Union parliamentary group, which is available to the Handelsblatt.
According to this, the overtime worked at the eight largest airports by May 31, 2022 amounted to 202,201 hours of overtime. That is already more overtime than in the entire previous year (160,431) and also significantly more than in the Corona year 2020, when a total of 172,690 overtime hours were incurred.
According to the Ministry of the Interior, most overtime was at Frankfurt Airport. From 2020 to May 2022, the federal police registered 220,738 hours of overtime with their officers there, at Munich Airport it was 115,197 hours and in Düsseldorf 59,102 hours.
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The deputy head of the Union parliamentary group, Andrea Lindholz (CSU), who had made the request, warned against the federal government’s considerations of burdening the federal police with security checks because of the current staff shortages at German airports. “This attitude of the traffic light seems downright cynical to the officials,” Lindholz told the Handelsblatt. “The Federal Police is not a stopgap, but needs its staff to be able to fulfill its core mission.”
Police union GdP open to increased federal police action
The federal government recently announced measures to alleviate the staff shortage at German airports and thus the flight chaos. Temporary assistants from abroad should be able to step in at short notice at the airport and help out with baggage handling and check-in, for example. Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) had also said that the federal police could also help out with the security checks on passengers if necessary.
>> Read also: Flight chaos causes a heated debate on the Lufthansa board
The police union (GdP) was open to the initiative. “The federal police will cover additional staffing needs during the holiday periods for checking cross-border travelers, where necessary,” said GdP Vice President Sven Hüber to the Handelsblatt.
Hüber attributes the high number of overtime hours to other tasks. The police officers are “always busy, especially in their role as border police, especially during holiday periods”. In addition, the increase in personnel due to the “security packages” is not yet complete. Added to this is the high fluctuation at the airports in particular.
In order to solve the handling problems, the larger German airport locations have now announced their need for foreign temporary workers. Inquiries were received from airport operators and private ground handling service providers, said the general manager of the airport association ADV, Ralph Beisel, on Thursday in Berlin. He could not give figures for individual locations.
The head of the employers’ association ABL, Thomas Richter, said the companies had requested fewer than 1,000 helpers. Overall, the ADV had reported a need for around 2000 temporary workers. They should come mainly from Turkey and be employed according to German collective bargaining conditions. The Federal Employment Agency gave the green light to employ the workers. They will help with passenger and baggage handling and work as a driver.
Bitkom President Berg wants to “completely avoid Cologne Airport in the next few weeks”
The SPD domestic politician Hakan Demir doubted that the measure would help. “The rapid recruitment of skilled workers reminds me of the 1960s and the guest workers,” the member of the Bundestag told the Handelsblatt. But he was “skeptical that so many people will come at such short notice”.
>> Read also: “A Travelogue of Horrors”: Chaos in aviation wears passengers down
The aviation expert Özay Tarim from the Verdi union sees it similarly. “There is no relaxation in sight,” Tarim told the Handelsblatt. “The workers who are now to be brought from Turkey will not be able to be deployed so quickly.” Because there will be no cutbacks in safety precautions.
All people who work at the airport need a so-called background check, which takes six to eight weeks, explained the trade unionist. Therefore, the aid measure promised by politicians will not bring much. “People simply overslept the situation, and now it’s simply too late to ease the situation in the short term,” said Tarim.
With a view to the current situation, Tarim said: “It got even worse than we thought.” The queues to the security check sometimes extended to the street outside the airport building. He cited Cologne/Bonn Airport as an example.
There were longer queues for passenger handling again this week. A video by Axel Springer manager Christoph Keese is circulating on LinkedIn.
“The queue in front of the security check surpasses anything I’ve experienced before,” Keese comments on the pictures. “It runs from the check-in at the main terminal all the way through the airport building, out of it, into Terminal 2, through Terminal 2 and out of the back again.”
A spokesman for the federal police confirmed that on Wednesday passengers sometimes had to wait up to two and a half hours. This also affects frequent flyers, who often use the so-called Fast Lane, a fast lane at the security checkpoint.
The abolition of the Fast Lane makes business trips during the holiday season “almost impossible,” says Keese. The president of the IT association Bitkom, Achim Berg, is therefore taking action: “I can hardly afford it, but I will avoid Cologne Airport completely for the next few weeks – a mega disaster (not only) for frequent flyers,” he writes LinkedIn.
More: Staff shortages at airports will continue for months