TNT may be forced by growing competition to increase the number of planned job losses in its Dutchpostal business from 7,000 to as many as 11,000, according to CEO Peter Bakker. The Dutch domestic
mail market will be fully liberalised as of January 2008.Originally, the group announced in December 2006 that it planned to reduce the postalworkforce by 11,000 employees between 2007 and 2010 as part of measures to reduce TNT Post’s annualcosts by EUR 300 million in the face of declining mail volumes and intensifying competition.
In April, however, TNT announced it would scale back the job losses to about 6,000 – 7,000but also freeze the wages of postal staff for the next two and a half years in order to achieve thesavings target. This would avoid the need for large-scale compulsory redundancies on top ofvoluntary departures and natural attrition.
But CEO Peter Bakker told Reuters in an interview at the weekend: “We may have to go as faras 10,000 or 11,000 redundancies.” TNT faced a “horrible choice” between large-scale job losses ora wage freeze over several years, he said on the sidelines of the World Economic Summit in Dalian,China.
TNT is due to start a new round of pay talks with Dutch unions on September 17. TNT Post hasabout 40,000 employees in the Netherlands.
