Tomorrow, Tuesday, from 9 a.m., a staff meeting will be held at the airport subsidiary Vienna International Airport Security Services (VIAS) at Vienna Airport. As reported, the staff complains about “starvation wages” that are not enough to live on and do not even begin to do justice to the responsible task.

The airport security staff at Innsbruck Airport and Graz Airport are also holding works meetings on Tuesday from 10 a.m. On Friday, November 25, 2022, another works meeting will take place from 11:30 a.m. at Salzburg Airport. At the meetings, the workers are informed by the works councils and the vida trade union about the wage demands for security personnel at the airports as part of the special collective bargaining negotiations. Due to the works meetings, longer waiting times for passengers cannot be ruled out, the union reports.

“Inflation has hit extremely hard, many colleagues are resigning because they no longer know how to pay their current bills, how they are supposed to get by with this pittance,” says Walter Burianek, VIAS works council chairman at Vienna Airport. The starting hourly wage at VIAS is currently EUR 9.94 gross, which makes EUR 1,722 gross for 40 hours per week. The gross hourly wage only rises to 11.40 euros up to the 16th year of service, adds Daniel Liebhart, chairman of the aviation department in the vida trade union, and adds: “Low wages, even though the security check is very demanding and involves a lot of responsibility Therefore, passenger control is no longer the largest low-wage area in Austrian aviation and we are calling for wage levels to be brought into line with those at German airports.” In the neighboring country, wages for airport control bodies will be harmonized at an hourly wage of EUR 20.60 gross by April 2023 . This corresponds to a doubling of the current hourly wage in Austria.

The colleagues (who completely nonsensical gender form, which the union used in its broadcast as a knee-jerk to political correctness, was corrected by Austrian Wings, since this meaningless corruption of the German language is rejected by an overwhelming majority of the population and numerous language experts) at VIAS also the high staff turnover. Few employees stay longer than four years. VIAS currently employs 950 people who carry out security checks on passengers and hand luggage around the clock. Before the pandemic, there were 1,300 employees. “This means that the work pressure and overtime for the workforce have increased enormously, because the flight business after the two pandemic years has long since started up again massively this summer,” adds VIAS Works Council Chairman Burianek.

“Even at the airports in the federal states, wages must be in the direction of Germany, i.e. in the direction of 3,000 euros gross per month,” demands Gernot Kopp, KV negotiation manager for the security industry in vida. In contrast to the VIAS, the collective agreement for the security industry applies to the security personnel at the federal state airports – the 2nd round of collective bargaining here ends on November 15th without a result. “The employer’s offer for a total of 15,000 in the security industry should not be taken seriously in view of the record inflation, which has meanwhile risen to 11 percent in October, emphasizes Kopp and concludes: “Despite working full-time, the colleagues can no longer afford to live. It is shameful that employers are acting as if inflation is not happening.”

(red / vida via APA-OTS)