Swiss Post is testing home deliveries of groceries on Sundays for customers of coop@home, the Coop online supermarket, using taxis for deliveries as the law doesn’t allow for postal employees to work on Sundays, in a controversial scheme heavily criticised by unions.
Swiss Post spokeswoman Nathalie Dérobert Fellay told CEP-Research that the pilot project is currently carried out in Zurich, Lausanne, Geneva and Basel. “Customers order their products on Saturdays up to 10 am and get them delivered on Sundays between 9-12 am.”
She explained that Swiss Post works together with licensed taxi companies to provide the Sunday deliveries. “The deliverers are thus taxi drivers. Swiss Post works with third-party providers (licensed taxi companies) who are authorised to work on Sundays, according to the Secretary of State for Economy SECO. The post itself doesn’t perform any duties on Sundays. For the post, it is prohibited by law to deliver shipments on Sundays with its own employees.”
Coop spokesman Ramón Gander told CEP-Research that Swiss Post has been delivering parcels for coop@home on Sundays since 1 October 2015. “We were approached by the post to participate in this experiment and accepted the offer. From 18 October last year, Coop@home extended its delivery service to Sundays as part of Swiss Post’ pilot project which is limited in time and regional terms.”
“This is an additional service, which, in our opinion, corresponds to the needs of customers especially in urban surroundings, offering greater flexibility for people who work. It’s convenient and simple. The procedure is the following: our customers order their goods on Saturday for delivery on Sunday, Coop@home picks the goods on Saturday and passes them on to the post. The employees of Coop@home don’t work for this (and otherwise) on Sundays. The experiment is expected to last until April 2016. Until then, the additional service is free. In case of continuation, the additional fee for Sunday deliveries will amount to CHF 5.00 (€4.50) per delivery,” Gander added.
Apart from Sunday deliveries, the Swiss postal operator delivers shipments for coop@home all over Switzerland from Monday to Saturdays during the day and from Monday to Friday in the evenings (5-8 pm), Dérobert Fellay said. Apart from Coop@home, Swiss Post is also trialling Sunday deliveries by taxi for the coffee capsule producer Nespresso.
Alongside Swiss Post, DPD takes care of wine deliveries for Coop@home from Monday to Saturday.
Dérobert Fellay stressed that the food sector bears growth potential in the Swiss e-commerce market. “Currently, the share of food in the Swiss e-commerce market is about 15% of the total volumes. However, it is becoming increasingly popular to order food over the Internet. In 2014, the share of grocery deliveries in total online orders increased by 5%,” she concluded.
But Swiss trade union Syndicom strongly criticised the Sunday delivery pilot scheme, saying that Swiss Post is using “the back door” to working on seven days a week. “The post must stick to the legal prohibition of work on Sundays and has no chance to get an exemption for Sunday deliveries of online purchases. However, these rules don’t apply for taxi companies that now act as subcontractors for the post: taxis are allowed to deliver goods on Sundays as long as they remain ‘taxis’ mainly transporting persons.
“The post is now ruthlessly exploiting this loophole cancelling the work prohibition on Sundays by means of which the legislation has protected Sunday rest until now. Nobody knows if this can make money and apparently nobody is interested,” the union claimed.
The union claimed that what the post is really interested in is to “encircle its district”. “For the post, it is all about preventing other providers from adopting this service for the expanding online trade and thus competing with the post in deliveries during the week. The taxi drivers who are badly paid and work on Sundays under lousy conditions pay the price for this strategy and also the delivery staff of the post whose employment terms are increasingly under pressure. In addition, it has a devastating impact on all other postal areas. The postal staff seems to be aware of it: in a survey by the staff newspaper of Swiss Post, 82% of the employees were against the Sunday service.”
