During the demos against the Covid measures on November 20, 2021 alone, the Vienna police worked around 12,000 hours of overtime. The control of the Covid measures also caused overtime to increase. Overall, the number remained relatively constant, according to an ORF report on Sunday.
Before the outbreak of the pandemic, overtime was mainly due to assignments at major events such as football games or embassy guards. In 2018, the Vienna police worked 2.34 million overtime hours, followed by 2.09 million in 2019 and 1.78 million in the first year of the pandemic. In the previous year, LPD Vienna recorded 2.09 million additional service hours.
In the past, colleagues would have liked to work overtime because of the money, but now only a few people would accept them because “the generations now rely more on free time and balance,” says Hermann Greylinger, chairman of the Social Democratic Unionists (FSG) faction in the police union. The unionist Gerhard Zauner, who is close to the ÖVP, from the Christian Unionists (FCG) faction, also criticized the ORF: “The colleagues are regularly ordered into their leisure blocks.”
The Vienna police are well aware of the “tense personnel situation”. However, the State Police Directorate is not finding enough new officers. “Of the applicants who contact us, between a quarter and a third make it into the police school and into the police profession,” police spokesman Markus Dittrich was quoted as saying on ORF.at. In Vienna, for example, there were 1,873 applications last year, but only 522 positions were filled. The responsible Ministry of the Interior would actually have approved more jobs. The two trade unionists are demanding better recruiting measures.
Source: Nachrichten
