Germany: Government will try to normalize the situation at airports with temporary workers from abroad

With specialized staff from abroad the federal government will try to deal with serious problems presented at airportsdue to significant staff shortages mainly in passenger and luggage control.

According to a spokesman for the Ministry of Interior, temporary workers, who will be offered a regular salary and housing, will have to pass the required security and reliability checks, which usually last two weeks.

The Police Union, however, points out that these personnel should only be employed in baggage management and not in positions that require a higher level of security. “We are talking about people who need to be intensively monitored and regularly informed about security issues, which requires a lot of time,” union president Andreas Roskov told Rheinische Post.

The issue was revealed by the newspaper Bild, which spoke about “Four-digit number” of skilled workers from Turkey, who could be ready to work at German airports as early as July. Labor Minister Hubertus Hale stressed that all forms of social dumping and exploitation would be ruled out, and that employers would have to provide decent accommodation and pay the wages provided for in the respective contracts. However, he did not reveal how many foreign temporary workers there will be.

Since the beginning of June, German airports have been in a state of chaos, with flight cancellations, long delays and baggage handling problems, mainly because companies made extensive staff cuts during the pandemic and proved unprepared for increased traffic. For example, Lufthansa announced a few weeks ago that it would cancel a total of 3,000 flights from Frankfurt and Munich airports in July, in part because many workers are absent with a coronavirus. The situation at Düsseldorf Airport was out of control at the weekend on the first day of the North Rhine-Westphalia school holiday, with dozens of flight cancellations and more than 1,000 suitcases either unloaded on planes or delivered to passengers who did not travel.

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