Thousands of Deutsche Post delivery staff went on a nationwide strike across Germany yesterday
causing considerable disruption in mail and parcel deliveries, with the strike continuing today
while Amazon workers at selected locations across the country have also been on strike on Tuesday
and some of them today as well.
According to the union, over 10,000 delivery staff took part in the industrial action taking
place in all 16 German states yesterday. This stands in contrast to the statement by a Deutsche
Post spokesman who said that only 7,500 staff stopped work for a few hours. Verdi claimed another
10,000 would take action today.
Last month, German postal and transport union Verdi demanded a weekly working time reduction
from 38.5 hours to 36 hours at unchanged wage levels for 140,000 Deutsche Post mail and parcel
employees in an escalation of the dispute over lower-paid parcel delivery workers. However,
Deutsche Post didn’t submit an offer during the negotiations round taking place on 19 March, the
union said.
“The employees of Deutsche Post AG are angry. Instead of making a serious offer during the
negotiations, the board of Deutsche Post threatens to outsource jobs. This is unbearable and we are
keeping up the pressure,” said Andrea Kocsis, Verdi deputy chairwoman and head of its postal and
logistics section.
The Deutsche Post spokesman told CEP-Research that six million letters and 300,000 parcels
were left undelivered across Germany yesterday as the result of the strike adding that the strike
is continuing today but to a more moderate extent. “Today, there were fewer workers on strike than
yesterday, around 5,000, with less than 10 per cent of our usual daily volumes being undelivered
amounting to around 4.8 million letters and 240,000 parcels.
“The shipment volumes that couldn’t be delivered yesterday are being delivered today
(according to the ‘first in – first out principle’). The shipments that are not delivered today
will be distributed on Saturday,” the spokesman added.
“The strike is not understandable for us at all when considering the course of the current
negotiations. The first round of negotiations on Verdi’s demand took place just a few days ago at
which the company has proposed a concept that takes up the union’s demand for shorter weekly
working times.”
He added: “In terms of content, this demand has nothing to do with the Verdi criticism of
new jobs created in the newly established regional delivery companies. These are subject to the
regional collective agreements that Verdi signed with industry employers’ associations for freight
forwarding and logistics while the wage demand related to weekly working time concerns the
collective agreement with Deutsche Post AG and the employees bound by the contract are not at all
affected by the new delivery companies.”
The next negotiations round is set for 14 April 2015, the spokesman confirmed.
This strike represents the latest stage in an ongoing labour dispute over Deutsche Post’s
plans to create up to 10,000 lower-paid parcel delivery jobs in Germany in new regional companies
based on local collective pay agreements. These plans have been heavily criticised by the union
which claims that by creating 49 regional companies for parcel delivery, the postal operator is
violating the existing agreement with Verdi which excludes outsourcing of deliveries to internal or
external companies.
Meanwhile, 5,500 people have signed permanent contracts with the new regional companies. Of
these, 3,800 employees had limited contracts with DPAG previously and their contracts have expired
while 1,700 people have been recruited externally, the spokesman said.
Separately, strikes started at selected locations of the online retail giant Amazon in
Germany on Tuesday. While at some locations the strikes ended on the same day, the industrial
action has been extended at the sites in Bad Hersfeld (Hessen), Leipzig (Saxony), Rheinberg and
Werner (North-Rhine Westphalia), until this evening. This will lead to unavoidable delays of
parcels ordered by Amazon customers, Verdi said. According to the union, around 1,700 Amazon
workers participated in the strike on Tuesday.
Verdi wants to negotiate a collective pay deal for Amazon workers based on the higher pay
levels of the retail industry but Amazon insists its employees are logistics workers and should
thus be paid at that sector’s pay levels, which are lower.
