Massive staff shortage: Bahn is planning 25,000 new hires

Status: 06.01.2023 1:04 p.m

According to the “Spiegel”, Deutsche Bahn has problems manning its signal boxes. In order to counteract the shortage of staff, the group wants to hire 25,000 new employees this year.

Staff shortages and sick leave at Deutsche Bahn have led to mass delays and train cancellations in recent weeks and months. According to a newspaper report, there were delays of 375,000 minutes from January to October alone because the train lacked pointers. In the summer there should have been a sharp increase nationwide because there were no or too few staff in the signal boxes, reports the “Spiegel” today with reference to internal documents of DB Netz AG.

100 delays per day in the Frankfurt area

The situation in central Germany was particularly dramatic. Around Frankfurt alone there were 100 delays every day, the report goes on to say. The planning in the signal boxes is said to have often been tight. In addition, these are often notoriously understaffed. There “there is no complete coverage of the performance-related personnel requirements for the signal box staff” in order to guarantee operation at all.

For this reason too, Deutsche Bahn is again planning around 25,000 new hires this year. “We need tens of thousands of new colleagues to meet the challenges at Deutsche Bahn,” said Group HR Director Martin Seiler. In the operational area in particular, investments will therefore be made in new employees “at a record level” this year.

According to Deutsche Bahn, it had hired around 28,000 new employees by 2022. Nevertheless, punctuality rates reached a historic low. According to a report by the AFP news agency, on average only 65.6 percent of long-distance trains were on time from January to November – in the summer months of July to August the rate was even less than 60 percent.

Bahn relies on its own qualification

Around 200,000 people currently work at DB in Germany. The bottom line is that around 9,000 new jobs are now being added, according to the state-owned company. The aim is, among other things, to improve the operational quality, to double the number of passengers and to completely renovate the partially ailing infrastructure. Of the 25,000 new hires, 5,500 are said to be junior staff – according to Seiler, a new record.

The railways rely “even more than before on their own qualification”. Training facilities would also be expanded and modernized for this purpose. In addition to the trainees and dual students, DB 2023 wants to attract around 4,200 specialists for the maintenance of rails and rail vehicles, as well as 3,000 people for construction projects and construction supervision. 2,100 train drivers are also to be added, as well as 1,600 dispatchers, 2,200 train service employees and 2,000 IT specialists.

Because of the shortage of skilled workers, however, the target for personnel is challenging, said Seiler. “The job market has become tighter and more competitive.” With a campaign based on the motto “What is important to you”, Deutsche Bahn wants to score points as an employer. In addition, more skilled workers are to be attracted from abroad. According to the company, Deutsche Bahn is active in around ten countries – for example in southern Europe, many Balkan countries and Turkey. According to Seiler, English as a working language is on the rise, especially in the IT sector.

High levels of sickness among transport companies

In order to keep fluctuation low, the group also wants to keep its current workforce. Deutsche Bahn wants to set incentives for this and now allows mobile working in other European countries for up to 30 working days per year. Shift systems and comeback programs for those returning after a break are also to be improved. The travel concessions popular with staff will also apply to non-marital partners of employees from the spring.

In the long term, i.e. ten or twenty years, the need for personnel must also be reduced, the board emphasized. That is why work is being done to increase flexibility and productivity and to promote standardization and digitization. “As a result of demographic change, almost twice as many people are leaving the labor market as are entering it, this calculation cannot add up,” says Seiler.

In addition to the lack of staff, a high level of sick leave is causing problems for all rail transport companies. “At this time of year, cold waves are not unusual, and yet sick leave of over 20 percent per day is a novelty in recent decades,” said Harald Kraus, the chairman of the personnel committee of the Association of German Transport Companies, recently to the newspapers of the editorial network Germany. Companies in town and country are considering or are already being forced to partially restrict the timetable.

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