A baggage handler has predicted more misery at Manchester Airport in the coming months. The veteran luggage worker, who is employed by one of the airport's several contractors, says stress is building and morale is falling.
The Daily Mirror reports the worker claims that their crew is working with half the number they did before the pandemic, meaning their efforts to load and unload the aircraft in good time are inevitably in vain. The baggage handler, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said better conditions and pay elsewhere had led many experienced colleagues to leave.
Manchester Airport provides and maintains the airport facility, while airlines are responsible for baggage, and usually employ contractors to deal with bags for them. Injuries caused by the gruelling job have also rendered workers out of action or unwilling to keep heaving bags over the hot summer months, they claimed.
"People aren't happy and more people are looking at leaving," they said. "It's good people that are looking at leaving. It's a vicious circle. You have to have 50 people on the ramp, but we're down to about 25 some days.
"The new people don't know what they're doing so you have to babysit for them for a month. There won't be much change unless we get the manpower in. Otherwise, we're going to continue having to work harder."
Manchester Airport started suffering from lengthy delays at security and check-in at the start of this year, with the Easter holidays proving a particularly difficult time. Last week, managing director Chris Woodroof said that while improvements had been made since then, he couldn't promise passengers a "great" experience this summer.
He told the BBC: "The aviation industry was decimated during Covid, and now has to do an enormous rebuild effort. That's airports, airlines, ground handlers, border force. All of these organisations have the biggest recruitment effort they've ever had to do."
The baggage handler said when Covid hit, their team was whittled down significantly and the vast majority of people put on furlough. "They took all the manpower off us," they claimed.
"During the pandemic people were finding other employment. Some people never came back."
Before that, the baggage handler said they got "quite a kick working for the airport". They added: "I was enjoying the job, I liked it, the camaraderie with the guys was great."
Since returning, a team made up of new faces with fewer workers and an increasing workload has struggled to find similar levels of morale. The worker added: "The department I'm in, some days you can have nine men, sometimes five. They're struggling to get people through the doors.
"By 3pm or 4pm you have a backlog. We work nine-hour shifts, and you're going constantly for a good seven of them hours."
The baggage handler said pay, which averaged out at about £10 an hour for their team, wasn't enough to keep people at the company. They added: "It's the stress and injuries as well."
For more stories from where you live, visit InYourArea.
