Airpro’s Helsinki-Vantaa chief shop steward Markku Juntunen explains the security check congestion with a lack of workers. The security check on the field has been very congested recently.
to Helsinki-Vantaa the airport has suffered in late August and early September from frequent traffic jams. Finavia has explained the congestion by, among other things, security inspectors getting sick and failing to predict the number of passengers.
Finavia’s subsidiary Airpro is responsible for security inspections.
Airpro’s Helsinki-Vantaa chief shop steward and occupational health and safety representative Markku Juntusen has his own view on the matter.
“There are not enough capable personnel. This is the result of years of personnel policy,” says Juntunen. In particular, he refers to layoffs during the corona period and the layoffs in 2021, where almost half of Airpro’s security inspectors lost their jobs.
“It took an absolutely freezing amount of experience and know-how.”
Congestions in Helsinki-Vantaa have been frequent.
Airports operating Airpro’s parent company, Finavia, determines how many employees are asked to go to work for a security check at any given time. According to Juntunen, orders are made too tightly. When there is no extra, it is not possible to respond to rapidly changing situations.
“It’s a cost, but if it’s paid, there will be situations like this where the field gets congested. It is an unfortunate fact.”
“Additional orders are indeed made, but mostly at the stage when the work shift lists have already been published. After that, the gaps are difficult to fill. There are hardly any qualified substitutes, and not very many workaholics who are always ready to work overtime.”
According to Juntunen, the few who almost always agree to overtime when asked may work 120 hours in two weeks.
The hard hours increase sick leave, and according to Juntunen, the employer’s labor protection obligation, i.e. Airpro, kicks in: even those who are willing cannot work indefinitely if their health is compromised.
“We have young employees here who imagine they can handle anything, but then they can’t.”
“Turnover is a big problem. If in the past the old employees had been kept, there would be no need to recruit new ones all the time. Unfortunately, Finavia has not been able to value experience and professionalism. The attitude has been condescending and arrogant,” says Juntunen.
Airpro managing director Sampo Paukkeri justifies the number of security inspectors on duty by the fact that the resources are planned with the service buyer.
“Unfortunately, despite careful planning, queues can be longer than normal on busy travel days.”
In total, Airpro has more than 1,000 employees. A significant proportion of them work at Helsinki-Vantaa’s security check.
Paukkeri admits that there is some turnover among employees.
“It is natural when there is a large number of personnel. We recruit and train new employees regularly. We have had competent workforce available,” says Paukkeri.
Sick leave is the chief shop steward and occupational health and safety representative, according to Juntunen, even without excessive overtime, relatively much, but he also puts the responsibility on the employer’s personnel policy.
The shortest shifts at the security check last four hours, others 6–8 hours, with a few hours off between work periods. For example, employees living in Espoo usually spend it in the field, when it is not worth traveling home for such a short time.
The longest shifts are 12 hours long. You may not have time to take breaks at all, except for two meals.
At worst, there have been 20 people on sick leave from the same shift, which means that “several lines fall out of use” from the security check.
Even in working conditions according to Juntunen, there is no boasting. The security check is centralized in a new hall with a high ceiling elsewhere, but not at the checkpoint. There is no ventilation, and it is warm in the summer, over 30 degrees at its worst.
“Props to Airpro for trying to take care of the workers’ conditions, but when the premises are not under Airpro’s own control, it is very difficult to start changing them so that it would be good to work”, says Juntunen.
Airpro According to CEO Paukker, the air traffic schedule structure defines work shifts and their lengths.
“Air traffic fluctuates, meaning there is a clear peak in the morning and afternoon. The work is therefore divided into morning and afternoon rush hours. Because of this, a small part of the work shifts have to be divided into several parts, although we strive to plan the best possible work shifts.”
According to Paukker, the periodicity of air traffic has always been part of the job. The employees have been aware of the challenging shifts, and have known about the nature of the work when they started working for Airpro.
According to Paukker, Airpro has organized functional break and rest areas for those employees who do not want to leave the airport during their free time between shifts.
“You can study or rest in them, whatever you want to do at the time.”
In the security check area, Airpro measures the room temperature. According to Paukker, new air conditioners have been installed in the area, and there is a water point near the security checkpoints, which is always in use by the staff.
After the corona pandemic, the number of passengers at Helsinki-Vantaa has run out.
Helsinki-Vantaa was put into use in the second spring new transillumination devicesthanks to which fluid bags, laptops and cameras no longer have to be lifted separately from luggage.
According to the observations of many travelers, nowadays the bag has to be re-examined quite often. According to Finavia, the additional checks are normal actions required by flight safety, which do not affect the flow of passengers.
“In certain cases, if in connection with the security check, for example, hand checks or an additional image are needed for a more detailed analysis of, say, a small bag or shoes, a separate screening machine is used in the security check. This procedure has no impact on passenger flow and is part of the normal security screening process,” he writes in his email reply Pia Fast About Finavia’s communication.
“Flight safety is something we do not compromise on under any circumstances,” Fast continues.
Chief Steward Juntus has a different view of the slowing effect of additional checks than Fast.
According to Juntunen, not enough time is allocated for the image interpretation, i.e. the first assessment of the contents of the bags, so the image interpreter has to mark the bags for a new inspection very sensitively. The automation of the inspection line also marks the bags more precisely to be scanned or re-transmitted.
“In general, you can say that the more stuff and the more tightly packed a bag is, the more likely it is that the bag will be re-examined,” says Juntunen.
According to Juntunen, re-inspections are slowed down compared to the old ones by the fact that the image interpreter does his work 200 meters away from the belts. This effectively prevents verbal communication, which further results in the bag inspector having to do his job blind compared to before, not knowing what to look for.
“It slows down the work,” explains Juntunen.
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