Even on the sixth day of the warning strike at the post office there is no sign of any approach. Verdi insists on 15 percent more wages, the management waves it off. As a result, around 20 percent of the parcels currently do not reach their destination. Some regions are particularly badly affected.
According to the company, every fifth package and every eleventh letter has been left behind because many Post employees have stopped working. Around 13,500 workers took part in the warning strikes in various regions of Germany, said a Post spokesman in Bonn. That is a little more than a third of the workforce in the affected locations. The failure rate of 20 percent for parcels and 9 percent for letters refers to the daily volume throughout Germany.
However, there was not a strike everywhere. In regions where there were strikes, the absentee rate was higher than the national average. Unionists expressed their satisfaction with the walkouts. “Things are going well,” said Thomas Großstück, the Verdi regional department head responsible for postal services in North Rhine-Westphalia. A spokeswoman for the Verdi Federal Association spoke of an extremely high level of participation.
The Post spokesman said that participation in the warning strike varies between regions and locations, which means it has different effects. Delays in the collection and delivery of letters and parcels could mean that the shipments “can only be delivered a few days later, i.e. depending on the end of the strike activities on site in the coming week”. For example, there was a strike in the Bonn area, in Bochum and in the Münsterland area – many letters and parcels were left there and were not delivered. Mannheim, Stuttgart and Freiburg were also affected.
The union is demanding 15 percent more wages and salaries for around 160,000 employees in the postal sector
The last wage increase in January 2022 was only two percent, according to the union, with reference to the currently high inflation. The collective bargaining demands are “necessary, fair and feasible,” says Verdi negotiator Andrea Kocsis. Management, on the other hand, considers the union’s demands to be exaggerated and unrepresentable. The top management points out that the group needs financial leeway for investments in order to be competitive in the long term and to secure jobs.
In addition, the Post points out that the group’s profit “is now largely generated in international business”. In fact, last year only about one-sixth of Deutsche Post DHL’s operating profit was generated from letters and parcels in Germany, compared to about one-third for staff. The global express and freight business has long been significantly more profitable for Swiss Post than its core business.
Nevertheless, trade unionists insist on a sharp increase in wages for the workforce in the German core business, i.e. letter and parcel delivery. The workload of the postal workers is high, stresses Andreas Henze from Verdi Baden-Württemberg. In delivery and in the distribution centers, employees walked “on the gums”. “They have to work faster and harder for corporate profits,” says the state department head for postal services. “Your backbreaking job must finally be financially valued.”
There had already been work stoppages at the post office last week, and the second wave of warning strikes began on Thursday. Collective bargaining is scheduled to continue on February 8th. Then Swiss Post wants to submit its own offer. “Despite the different positions, we assume that we will make progress in fair and speedy talks in the next round of negotiations […],” says the Post spokesman.
