Short-time working is repeatedly presented by politicians, entrepreneurs, but also trade unions as a miracle cure for overcoming the corona crisis. So far, many jobs have been saved in this way, but in aviation in particular there are increasing weaknesses that were not taken into account by employers when negotiating collective agreements.

In Austria, only the basic wage is covered by short-time work. This means that no variable salary components are used for the calculation. At Austrian Airlines, too, this has an extremely negative effect on the bank account, especially for flight attendants, so that some have to do part-time jobs. Since the restaurant has been closed for some time and there is no prospect of opening anytime soon, the situation is particularly difficult. The Vida union and some media did it in the fall attention to this complicated situation. Vida specialist group chairman Daniel Liebhart referred to the warnings of previous years, because in the event of a crisis that has to be bridged with short-time work, the variable wage components are not recorded. This means that the real income is not around 80 percent, but significantly lower, because the variable parts do not exist for the Public Employment Service for legal reasons.

In the long run, this is a serious problem for people on short-time work, because wages were already in a downward spiral before the corona pandemic. This is mainly due to the tough competition. While Austrian Airlines and their employees can benefit from the short-time work, the situation is even tougher for the employees at the competitors Lauda Europe and Wizz Air. These have a wage system that is characterized by low basic wages combined with hourly and / or sector-dependent payments. The lion's share of earnings is therefore generated through the hours of flight. But since there is little flown, only the basic salary is paid for many months. Some Wizz Air flight attendants at the Vienna base therefore do not receive a particularly generous payment of around 755 euros per month, as Aviation Direct reported. Even in Eastern European countries, this sum is hardly enough to make ends meet.

More and more companies are said to be abusing short-time working

But there is also a contrast: some companies have registered short-time work for their employees and receive state aid for them. In fact, they work full-time and the audacity goes so far that the authorities are presented with “down-calculated” timesheets. In Germany there are said to be well over 4.000 reports of abuse of short-time work. According to the Osnabrücker Zeitung, these were submitted by name to various employment offices. However, the number of unreported cases is likely to be much higher, since this number does not include the anonymous information.

In Austria, Interior Minister Karl Nehammer (ÖVP) and other members of the government are threatening that there will be no mercy if short-time work is abused, but a differentiated picture can be heard from public employment service circles. Due to the many companies that are on short-time work and, on top of that, the record unemployment, most regional offices simply lack the staff to be able to perform meticulous checks. Due to the pandemic, on-site appointments are only made in absolute exceptional cases and from the very top, i.e. on the part of the government, there should also be a certain goodwill in the direction of “not shooting at sparrows with cannons”.

In any case, there is no other explanation for the fact that in Austria, too, countless complaints from employees who state their own work full-time, but are formally on short-time work, are not or only extremely slowly followed up. The officials of the labor market service, which was also considered understaffed before the corona pandemic, can hardly be reproached, because the political will is obviously missing.

Ultimately, it is also a moral question as to whether it is fair to collect short-time working, to deploy the affected employees full-time for less money, even though business is booming regardless of the pandemic. It is certainly not fair to those companies that have been badly hit by the crisis. But: Those employees who, because of the short-time work for bonuses, variable components and other parts of the wage that do not have to be paid due to the aid measure, have a hard time making ends meet. The picture is therefore quite depressing, because many - for example AUA flight attendants - want to work more, but cannot because of the continued weak demand and in other industries, despite full order books and, according to those affected, “more work than ever” is being carried out on short-time work.