The Chamber of Labour (AK) and the trade union vida have assessed the working conditions in the security industry and come to a worrying conclusion: “The safety for the people working in this field is not adequate,” said vida expert Gernot Kopp. The fact that security personnel work up to five consecutive days with twelve-hour shifts is “highly risky,” according to Gernot Kopp, the chairman of the life-management sector of the union.
Certified training and the elimination of solo duty shifts need to be implemented in the industry, emphasized the workers’ representatives on Thursday. “Security cannot be provided at a low cost – neither for clients nor for others,” warned Bianca Schrittwieser, head of the Labour Law Department of AK Wien.
The security sector has been facing “a multitude of problems” for years. “Our case analysis confirms several systemic issues: the majority of invoices presented to us were erroneous,” the criticism stated. Overtime and bonuses are either not paid or miscalculated. The workers’ representatives pointed to frequent illegal “negative hours” and last-minute shift changes.
AK and vida concluded: “Employees in the security industry do not find safe and reliable working conditions.” The pressure from prices in the industry is being passed on to employees, resulting in long working hours, last-minute scheduling, difficult working conditions, and cutbacks in training and staffing.
The market is dominated by companies such as G4S, Securitas, Siwacht, and ÖWD, which together make up more than half of the market. All four of these companies have works councils, allowing labor law interventions to be resolved outside of court. “Numerous studies by AK and trade unions show that companies with a works council are more economically successful and more resilient in times of crisis,” AK and vida noted.
In total, around 12,700 people are employed in the security industry in Austria. Adding short-term workers for specific events, the number rises to about 16,000. “Around 5,000 employees worked in Vienna in 2024, making up nearly 40% of all security staff in Austria,” AK and vida stated.
From January 1, 2023, to November 30, 2024, AK Wien analyzed approximately 400 cases from the sector and conducted about 700 advisory sessions. “This is a remarkable number of cases for such a small industry, especially considering that only a portion of the wronged employees turn to the AK, and the number of unreported cases is even higher,” said the Chamber. It was noted that the proportion of women in these cases was 20%. The sector is characterized by high turnover, with 62% of employees staying in the same job for less than a year.
“36% of the cases involved overtime that was not paid or not correctly paid. The discrepancies ranged from minor differences to extreme examples, where 300 overtime hours with bonuses were hidden,” the workers’ representatives stated, shocked.
Regarding pay, the situation is not good. In construction site security, wages vary greatly, ranging from €12.25 to €16.09 per hour. Moreover, “The treatment of sick employees is poor and reveals a clear pattern: the second sick leave in an employment relationship can become a problem for employees, many are dismissed – often very informally via WhatsApp,” criticized AK and vida.
Another issue is the “reliability check,” which varies in duration depending on the federal state and leads to strange results. “There are cases where even traffic fines have led to the withdrawal of reliability,” AK and vida stated.
A major topic of discussion was the use of subcontractors, especially during the festival season. “In some cases, it is barely possible to trace which companies the affected employees were truly employed by. These constructions make it very difficult to enforce wage claims,” the Chamber of Labour and trade union criticized. They called for “effective and deterrent penalties for wage dumping” and “restriction of subcontractor chains.”
