He announced it at the end of last November but now Nuremberg's public transport company has actually done it: the Verkehrs-Aktiengesellschaft Nürnberg (VAG) has hired five students to address the shortage of tram drivers and now other cities too in Germany, like Munich and Cologne, they want to focus on university students.
It all started a few months ago, when VAG published a detail announcement on its website: “Are you a student and looking for a profitable part-time job? He drives a streetcar.”
“Driver shortages and increased traffic do not go together,” the note read. “The HR managers at Verkehrs-Aktiengesellschaft Nürnberg – VAG also think this way and are therefore always adopting new recruitment approaches. Today they offer students in the Nuremberg metropolitan area a new possibility: they can train to become tram drivers during the next semester's break and then work for VAG on a student-worker contract; or take advantage of a semester of internship to get a taste of the local transport company and also acquire a driving license.”
No sooner said than done: out of 36 applications received, the Nuremberg public transport company hired five students. “It's a good feeling,” he explained to the French press agency Afp 24-year-old Benedikt Hanne, one of five future tram drivers in the city. “We are happy to have new colleagues,” he said said to the Bavarian television station BR24 VAG driver Christoph Wallnöfer, who is also a member of the German sustainable mobility association Verkehrsclub Deutschland (VCD).
The young people, all at least 21 years of age and already in possession of a driver's license, will now have to take a four-week accelerated training course during their spring break from university classes.
Among the five chosen, as reported by the Bavarian broadcaster, there is also 27-year-old Daniel Antoschenko, who studies computer science at the “Georg Simon Ohm” University of Nuremberg, the main technological institute in the German city. In November he was looking for a job to support his studies when he noticed the VAG advert and so he decided to become a part-time tram driver, since apparently there were no others to be found.
In fact, Nuremberg alone has to hire 160 new drivers every year, including subways, trams and buses, while the entire transport sector, like many others in Germany, suffers from a serious shortage of manpower. According to the German trade union Ver.di, many local transport operators report between 20 and 30 percent vacancies. All this has caused an increase in pressure on current employees, who not surprisingly have been involved in several strikes in recent weeks.
So much so that the experiment of recruiting students is also expanding to other cities in Germany. In Munich, the capital of Bavaria, the local transport authority has long promoted the employment of university students, even offering a free season ticket. In Mannheim, in western Germany, a partnership called “Drive & Study” was created with the local university of applied sciences. Cologne also chose to turn to students to address staff shortages in public transport and not to reduce the frequency of trips.
There are only accelerated courses that allow young people to start driving vehicles earlier than expected (in Nuremberg they receive 30 days of training compared to the usual 54 reserved for new hires). However, this does not constitute a safety problem at all, at least for the German sustainable mobility association Verkehrsclub Deutschland (VCD). “If they had had any doubts, they would never have accepted,” explained the aforementioned Wallnöfer, according to whom the hiring of the boys was also coordinated with the VAG workers' works council. Very happy to welcome new workforce.
