Mail and parcel deliveries in Belgium have been disrupted to some extent by the 24-hour strikeby public and private sector workers yesterday (January 30) in protest at government cuts with
certain regions of the country being more affected than others.TNT Express, whose European air hub is located at Liege airport, did not experience anydisruptions from the strike, especially due to its good preparations in advance, spokesman CyrilleGibot told CEP-Research.
The strike started on Sunday evening at 22.00 and lasted until 22.00 on Monday evening. “Weoperated normally on both evenings. On Sunday afternoon, we organised more staff at Liege airportto be able to load the shipments onto the aircraft to speed up the operations and make sure theplanes could take off and depart before 22.00. And we also made sure the air traffic controlservice was available,” he explained.
Gibot admitted that there were some flight delays across Europe due to difficult weatherconditions but this wasn’t related in any way to the strike action in Belgium.
Bpost said that 89% of the country’s post offices were opened on the day of the strike with 74offices being closed out of the 700 in total. In Brussels, more offices were closed for the simplereason that staff could not get to their workplace because the strike affected all means oftransport across Belgium, including trains and buses.
After the strike ended, transport resumed as usual getting back to normal on Tuesday morning,Belgian media reported.
In terms of domestic mail and parcel deliveries, 75% of delivery rounds were carried outnormally nationwide. The regions that were more affected by the strike included Hainaut and Namurwith only 57% of delivery rounds completed and 94% of newspapers distributed. This was due to veryfew postmen working because the two sorting centres in Wallonia were closed, as well as thefacilities in Liège and Luxembourg where only 46% of the delivery rounds were completed and 88% ofthe newspapers distributed, bpost reported.
Belgian unions showed themselves satisfied about the outcome of yesterday’s strike. AnneDemelenne, general secretary of the FGTB federation, claimed the industrial action was a success“because the workers in the public and private sectors support us when we say that we havealternatives to austerity. When we ask that instead of reducing unemployment benefits, theunemployed person could be offered a job…They support us in our alternatives when we say thatBelgian fiscal system is as hell for workers, for their revenues, but heaven for the wealthierones.”
In contrast, the Federation of the Belgian Enterprises (FEB) played down the success of themovement, according to Belgian media reports.
