Employees who transport disabled Schiphol travelers run health risks
Employees who transport disabled passengers at Schiphol are often put in unsafe situations that pose health risks, according to internal documents reviewed by the NOS. This includes lifting passengers without proper aids and transporting travelers with heavy baggage, the documents reveal.
Schiphol uses the transport company Axxicom to help disabled travelers get to and from airplanes. A safety expert who checked documents from Axxicom has confirmed the company has poor provisions for its employees' health and safety, but neither Axxicom nor Schiphol have taken steps to remedy the situation.
For example, employees told the NOS anonymously that they regularly push travelers and their luggage in manual wheelchairs. They also have to lift the passengers into airplane seats without lifting aids. Although lifting standards specify that 23 kilograms is the maximum amount of weight an employee should lift, passengers often weigh more than this –– sometimes up to 100 kilograms.
In addition, employees must often lift people in a position that causes them to bend and twist their backs. These risks are laid out in Axxicom's risk inventory and evaluation (RI&E) –– but solutions are missing, said security expert Tiemen van der Worp. And the few solutions that are present have not been tested.
"I determined that the physical strain was severe," said Van der Worp, who reviewed Axxicom's RI&E when the company signed a new contract with Schiphol in 2019. He told Axxicom that it did not have a sufficient action plan and that it should expect work-related health problems even among resilient employees. "[It] is physically murderous work."
Schiphol told the NOS that it asked for Axxicom's RI&E at the time the contract was signed, and was told that all was in order. However, Schiphol did not read the document.
"The doubt must be removed. That is why it is good that Axxicom has the documents re-tested," a spokesperson for Schiphol told the NOS.
Axxicom responded that it was "shocked" that its RI&E had not been tested. On Saturday, the company told the NOS that it had tested and updated the documents. It did not, however, provide further details about how it would mitigate physical burdens on employees, and it would not share the documents. The company also noted that employees always have two lifting supervisors present when lifting passengers into aircraft seats.
Earlier reporting by the NOS showed that many employees at Schiphol's baggage handlers do extremely heavy work that endangers their health. These companies have contracts with airlines but not with the airport itself, so Schiphol told the NOS it could do little to change these conditions. However, Axxicom does have a contract with Schiphol, according to the NOS.