The federal government wants to help aviation to alleviate the staff shortage at German airports and thus the chaos there.
Temporary assistants from abroad should be able to step in at short notice at airports and help out with baggage handling and check-in, said Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP), Labor Minister Hubertus Heil and Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (both SPD) at a joint press conference on Wednesday in Berlin.
The ministers reaffirmed that there should be no compromises when it comes to security and that the assistants – mainly from Turkey – would be paid according to standard wages.
Above all, there was a lack of skilled workers from ground service providers and private security companies.
One now wants to issue residence and work permits quickly, said Faeser.
Heil added that wage and social dumping would be ruled out.
There will be no temporary work.
The workers would have to be hired by the companies themselves.
Overall, this should help to defuse the sometimes chaotic situation at the airports.
Because a lack of staff at airlines and especially ground service providers causes queues, delays and flight cancellations.
Airlines are canceling thousands of flights across Europe to relieve the overwhelmed system.
Lufthansa alone is taking around 3,000 connections at its hubs in Frankfurt and Munich out of the flight schedule for the summer.
Airline boss Carsten Spohr apologized to the passengers and admitted that after the pandemic crisis, savings “were exaggerated in one place or another”.
However, many assistants are unlikely to be deployed until August at the earliest - and thus too late for the holiday business at many airports, said Thomas Richter, head of the employers' association of ground handling service providers in aviation (ABL), recently in a Reuters interview.
"It doesn't solve the problem, but it certainly helps."