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Queues at Cologne-Bonn Airport: The summer holidays in North Rhine-Westphalia begin this weekend
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IMAGO/Christoph Hardt / IMAGO/Panama Pictures
The aviation industry is demanding that the tense situation at airports with staff from Turkey be eased.
The Federal Association of the German Aviation Industry announced this week that special permits from German authorities were required for the deployment of around 2,000 workers.
According to a report, the interior, labor and transport ministries now want to comply with these wishes in the fight against staff shortages.
You have announced a joint campaign for the temporary employment of foreign assistants at German airports.
"The federal government is planning to allow urgently needed personnel to enter Germany for temporary work," said Labor Minister Hubertus Heil of "Bild am Sonntag".
Any form of social dumping and exploitation should be excluded, said the SPD politician.
“Employers have to pay collectively agreed wages and provide decent accommodation for a limited time.” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) added: “We will make it possible for helpers from abroad to be used, for example, for baggage handling”.
According to "Bild am Sonntag", a four-digit number of skilled workers from Turkey should be brought to Germany, who could at best be deployed for a few months from July.
Lufthansa does not expect normalization until 2023
Aviation is in a dilemma.
With the ebb of the corona pandemic, which paralyzed the industry for a long time, the industry finally intends to take off.
But instead there are flight cancellations, delays and queues.
The sticking point is a lack of staff and bottlenecks at security controls, check-in and aircraft handling.
According to the airport association ADV, about every fifth position there is vacant.
Lufthansa recently announced that it would cancel more than 2,000 more flights at its Frankfurt and Munich hubs – partly because more crews are reporting sick due to corona cases.
A good two weeks ago, she announced that she would be canceling 900 connections on Fridays and weekends in July.
The low-cost subsidiary Eurowings also expects further cuts.
In view of this situation, Lufthansa is not expecting flight operations to normalize until next year.
Currently only helping to reduce the number of flights.
This is not only a German problem, but applies to the whole world.
It can actually take a while before new workers can be deployed - also because of the industry-specific security checks.
Transport Minister Volker Wissing meanwhile rejected responsibility for the chaotic conditions at the airports - and sees the companies as having a duty.
"The federal government is not responsible for the personnel policy of the airport companies and airlines," said the FDP politician of the "BamS".
The Federal Ministry of Transport is responsible for air traffic control and the coordination of flight operations.
"And everything runs smoothly there." However, industry experts consider the outsourcing of many tasks to external service providers by politicians in the course of the noughties to be one of the biggest problems for airport operations.
The trade union Ver.di accordingly points out the low pay for many airport employees – and demands significantly more salary.
This could also facilitate the search for urgently needed personnel.
A study by the German Economic Institute (IW) identified a gap of around 7,200 skilled workers in aviation in Germany this week.
At the same time, there are "no longer any reserves on the labor market" to fill these vacancies for air and ground personnel - there is a particular lack of personnel on the ground.
Apr/Reuters