Employees, works councils and the Verdi union accuse the management of the nationwide airport service provider Aviation Handling Services (AHS) of wanting to disregard their rights. In an open letter published on Friday to the AHS managing directors and, as representatives of the shareholders, to Hamburg and Hanover airports, it says: “We, the AHS employees, have already made many painful contributions to support the AHS.” But what is happening now goes far beyond that. “Here our democratic rights as employees, those of our works councils and our trade union are called into question.”
According to Verdi, AHS, with its almost 2000 employees nationwide (2019), handles passenger handling at Hamburg, Hanover, Bremen, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt and Stuttgart airports. The employees accuse the AHS, headquartered in Hamburg, among other things, of wanting to remove the exclusion of operational dismissals from the company agreements despite short-time working. It is the clear will of the federal government to protect jobs through short-time work. “The AHS obviously wants to receive short-time work allowance instead and still release employees into unemployment.” In addition, in the event of strikes, “black lists” of employees involved were announced and works councils were put under massive and personal pressure at some locations.
AHS denied the allegations. “Of course AHS adheres to existing laws and agreements with the social partners as well as applicable collective bargaining law,” explained a spokeswoman. The primary goal is to keep jobs. “The management is currently in contact with the local works councils to enable an extension of the short-time working in the AHS group and trust in being able to achieve constructive results with all social partners for the benefit of the AHS employees.” For AHS it is also incomprehensible that politicians have not yet granted any financial aid to the ground handling service providers, as has already been demanded by the employers’ association of ground handling service providers in the air transport sector (ABL). “AHS is also badly affected by this.”
Hamburg Airport – 51 percent owned by the city – has a 27.25 percent stake in AHS and did not want to comment on the letter. He referred to the AHS. “AHS is an independent, nationwide operating company, Hamburg Airport only has a minority stake in AHS.”
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