Status: 01/28/2023 07:28 a.m
The ver.di trade union has called on Deutsche Post employees to continue the warning strikes on Saturday. Tens of thousands of employees nationwide had already stopped working on Thursday and Friday.
The delivery of letters and parcels nationwide could be further delayed in some cases. In the collective bargaining dispute at Deutsche Post, employees in selected companies in the parcel and letter centers as well as in parcel, letter and group delivery are also called on Saturday to lay down their work. The trade union ver.di has called for another strike, as the news agencies dpa and AFP reported.
This is intended to extend the strike to the third day in a row. According to ver.di, around 24,000 Swiss Post employees across Germany had already stopped working on Thursday and Friday. There was also a three-day warning strike last week, in which, according to the union, around 30,000 employees took part.
Ver.di demands 15 percent more wages
The next negotiations in the collective bargaining dispute are due in about a week and a half. Deutsche Post has already announced that it intends to submit an offer, but at the same time emphasizes that ver.di’s demands cannot be met.
The trade union insists on a wage increase of 15 percent for the approximately 160,000 collective bargaining employees nationwide with a term of the collective agreement of twelve months and justifies its demand with the high inflation, which must be compensated. In addition, the training allowances for each year of training are to be increased by 200 euros per month.
Post criticizes strike as “excessive”
The deputy ver.di chairman and negotiator in the collective bargaining dispute, Andrea Kocsis, referred to the record profit of around 8.4 billion euros, which the post office expects for the past year. “The company owes this success to the work of its employees. Against this background, too, our wage demands are necessary, fair and feasible,” stressed Kocsis.
The employer, on the other hand, had criticized the ongoing warning strike on Friday as “excessive” and also emphasized that the wage increase demanded by the union side was “not justifiable”. With such an increase, it would therefore hardly be possible to pay attractive wages and secure jobs in the long term .