Several hundred Swiss Post staff have held protests over plans to reorganise the country’s postalnetwork and create some 200 postal agencies to cover rural areas.
Postal unions said that about 450 workers gathered in Lucerne, Neuenberg and Lugano todemonstrate over their demands that the reorganisation should be implemented without job losses orpay cuts. Unions plan to hold regular Monday demonstrations over the issue.
Swiss Post said that it regretted that the protests had been organised before the start oftalks with the unions in December over a social plan for the network restructuring. Under itsproject Ymago, the Swiss national postal operator plans some 400-500 job losses as part of thepostal network restructuring but has said that it aims to avoid redundancies.
The main elements of the project are an internal reorganisation of responsibilities betweenpost offices with centralisation of administrative tasks, and the creation of 200 new-style postalagencies in villages. Post offices will also expand sales of non-postal products to generate newrevenues.
Swiss Post aims to generate CHF 50 million worth of savings in its loss-making postal networkthrough the restructuring.
