Postal workers in Portugal have said they are determined to continue industrial action againsttheir employer, the state-owned CTT Correios, over possible job cuts due to the handling of their
work by subcontractors.“We will decide upon new forms of action from 20 January,” said the postal workers’ unionSNTCT in a statement.
The union claims that 60% of CTT employees – about 8,000 of the 13,000 who work for thenational postal operator in offices up and down the country – boycotted work in a nationwide strikeon 27 December.
The strike was the third such strike by postal workers in a year and severely disrupted thehandling, transport and distribution of mail across the country.
Their campaign has particularly gathered momentum since November, through a series of partialstrikes delaying millions of postal items and hitting mail in the run-up to Christmas.
CTT said delivery of priority mail, such as pension cheques and medicines, registered mailand its express service Blue Mail were not being affected by the strikes.
The postal service is intent on subcontracting large volume accounts to outside companies –including Mailtec, the printer and finisher that CTT acquired in July 2005 – but says this issimply designed to improve services and will not lead to any redundancies.
“We reiterate that there are no jobs at risk,” CTT said recently. “On the contrary, thecompany maintains policies of social protection and structural modernisation with plans to create anew CTT-owned business mail centre for large clients that will create (new jobs).”
CTT Correios president, Luís Nazaré, has gone on record as saying that Portugal faced “enormous challenges” in the run-up to EU postal liberalisation in 2009 and could “improve its valuechain” by using companies such as Mailtec for document management, while diversifying its portfoliointo financial and banking services.
Like other EU countries, Portugal faces having to open up its mail services 100% to privatecompetition by 2009 and SNTCT believes that CTT Correios is already being prepared for an eventualprivatisation or the hiving off of profitable business segments.
