‘If the queues are huge at Terminal 1, a good trick is to head to T2 and transition back’
A security checker at Dublin Airport, who is currently on a career break, has spoken of the anti-social hours, 20-hour contracts and the frustrations of being a ‘yellow-pack’ employee at the country’s biggest transport hub.
‘WHEN I was first offered a contract [to work in security at Dublin Airport] I thought, “That’s a good job for life”. I thought I’d have a pension, overtime, good holidays. It didn’t work out like that.
‘I was working for just above the minimum wage and for a minimum of 20 hours a week. The problem was, most of the time it was only 20 hours that we got. When we started the job we were told we could work up to 40 hours, but it was very hard to get overtime.
‘As well as the limited and unsocial hours, it was very rare that you could have an input into when you worked.
‘There were two tiers of employees. There were the old-timers who were on good conditions and had different contracts. They got discounts on flights, overtime for weekends and bank holidays. We got none of that. We were yellow-pack workers.
‘The problem with Dublin Airport
hasn’t just happened now; it has increasingly become a bad airport to travel through. Anyone who uses it regularly knows that the queues have been progressively longer and longer, leaving aside the pandemic when people weren’t able to travel.
‘My advice is to always use the Fast Track. If the lines are huge in Terminal 1, a good trick is to go up to Terminal 2, the new terminal. Go in that way and then transition back to Terminal 1 when you’re airside.
Little things like that can help.
‘When the opportunity for a career break came up, I jumped at it. I won’t be running back into it unless they improve their conditions substantially.’