The indefinite postal strike in Germany spread to more Deutsche Post operations today but appears to have had relatively little impact on business so far.
Services union Verdi, which launched a ‘phased indefinite strike’ yesterday afternoon, said today that some 8,000 staff in Deutsche Post’s 83 mail sorting centres, along with some delivery staff in Berlin and other parts of the country were now taking industrial action. The union plans to extend the strike to more parts of Deutsche Post’s mail and parcel operations in the coming days.
Deutsche Post confirmed that mail sorting centres across the country have been affected by the strike and said that some 7,000 staff had participated in the work stoppage today, which was about the same level as the earlier warning strikes.
But a spokeswoman stressed to CEP-Research: “We have been able to keep the negative consequences of the strike relatively limited for our customers. Due to today’s work stoppages, about seven million letters – which is about 11% of the 65 million letters a day – will first reach recipients one day later.”
She declined to spell out the company’s measures to cope with the strike but confirmed that administrative and sales staff as well as workers from external suppliers would be used to keep the impact as low as possible. “Moreover, our 38,000 civil servants are not striking and are working normally,” she added.
In the labour dispute, Verdi is aiming to prevent Deutsche Post from transferring parcel delivery operations to 49 newly-created regional subsidiaries in order to reduce operating costs. Workers at these firms are not covered by the group’s main collective agreement in Germany but are paid at the lower level of local collective agreements in the freight forwarding and logistics sector.
This controversial topic has overshadowed the broader issue of a new collective pay and working conditions agreement for some 130,000 – 140,000 Deutsche Post staff. Verdi called a strike after negotiations broke down last week following six rounds of talks without a deal.
