“The protection of fair-paid jobs in freight transport must finally be clearer regulated at EU level,” says AK President Rudi Kaske. The so-called “Mobility Package I” is currently being negotiated in the EU Parliament in Brussels. “This would be an opportunity to better protect fairly paid jobs in the transport industry and to stand up to Austrian companies that pay their drivers on the basis of the collective agreement in force in Austria,” says Kaske.
Approximately 120,000 people work in freight transport and works transport in Austria and move around 370 million tons of goods every year. At the moment already 22 percent of road freight transport in Germany is provided by foreign companies. This has cost in Austria so far 14,000 jobs, and rising, writes the Chamber of Labor in a release.
In addition, it is emphasized: “In international transports to and from Austria, the Austrian transport industry has already lost 40 percent of its market since 2000. Now it’s about the inner Austrian transport. “
The AK therefore demands:
-) At the EU level, the transport of foreign domestic companies (cabotage) must be effectively limited in the course of the negotiations on “Mobility Package I”.
-) The Minister of Transport must work at EU level to facilitate controls. This is due to an obligation for foreign trucks to have all the documents on board, from the contract of carriage to details of the consignor and consignee, description of the goods and the carrier, the papers of the truck driver and the vehicle up to the employment contract with foreign drivers ,
-) The Posting of Workers Directive must be extended to the protection of fair-paid jobs in freight and bus transport. The Posting of Workers Directive ensures that wages for companies that send workers from neighboring European countries to work in Austria also have to be paid in accordance with Austrian wage standards. This directive must also be applied and enforced in the transport of goods and passengers from the first day on, not as previously discussed after the third day.
-) At national level, the Minister of Transport must establish a “freight traffic control office”. There is already an approach to a common truck control platform from the Transport, Social Affairs, Finance, Interior and Social Security. This must be expanded.
In Austria, according to the Chamber of Labor, a truck driver earns more than € 1,500 gross a month, while in Romania, for example, it is only € 246 a month. This drastic pay gap with the Eastern and South-Eastern European EU Member States has meant that the international transport of goods by far has been largely foreign-owned. In purely domestic traffic, Austrian companies are still dominating – especially in works transport. But these companies and their employees are also coming under increasing pressure.
