Letters and parcels will not be delivered again in the region until Monday

• Deutsche Post distribution centers have been on strike since Thursday afternoon
• Berlin and Brandenburg have been affected since the night shift – delivery will only start again on Monday
• Verdi demands 15 percent more money
• Post is targeting talks in February

Deutsche Post employees in Berlin and Brandenburg went on warning strike on Friday. Around 2,700 employees had stopped working, said the state district department manager Benita Unger on Friday the rbb. That corresponds to a quarter of the approximately 12,000 Post employees in the region. According to Unger, the participation shows that the employees are resolutely behind the demands of the union.

Affected by the work stoppages are the regional mail distribution centers in Berlin-Tempelhof, Schoenefeld, Stahnsdorf and Hennigsdorf as well as the parcel centers Ruedersdorf, Boernicke and Ludwigsfelde. According to Verdi, more than one million parcels and letters are prepared every night in these centers for delivery the following day.

The background to the strike is the unsuccessful second round of negotiations between the Verdi union and Deutsche Post. The union then called for two-day strikes. It is expected that a total of approx 3,000 employees in the Letter, group and parcel delivery in Berlin and Brandenburg will follow the call, said the state association of the Verdi union.

The employees of Letter and parcel distribution centers in Berlin and Brandenburg, which pre-sorted the shipments only for them night on Friday called for a warning strike, said Verdi department head Benita Unger when asked by rbb on Thursday.

employees of Letter and parcel delivery in Berlin and Brandenburg are from Friday morning until including Saturday called for a warning strike, Unger explained further. “The delivery will not be resumed until Monday,” said the trade unionist. Parcels would only be delivered on Friday and Saturday by the Post subsidiary DHL Express, she emphasized.

A spokesman for Deutsche Post DHL told rbb that customers must therefore accompany the mailing of letters and parcels different delays depending on where the items were posted and where they are to be transported. Delivery can be expected in most cases between the middle and end of next week.

The participants made no progress in the second round of negotiations for the company’s approximately 160,000 employees. “Employers have made it very clear that they are not prepared to compensate for the loss in real wages and inflation,” said Verdi negotiator Andrea Kocsis on Thursday in Cologne (North Rhine-Westphalia). However, Verdi considers the demands to be “necessary, fair and feasible”.

The union demands 15 percent more money with a contract period of one year. The Post had repeatedly dismissed the salary claim as unrealistic. It is also aiming for a longer term.

“Our collective bargaining demands are necessary, fair and feasible,” Kocsis affirmed. Referring to the high inflation, she said that in view of the Post’s billions in profits, it was “a provocation that employers refuse to compensate for real wage losses”.

The majority of Verdi members at Swiss Post have a low income and cannot cope with real wage losses, she said. At the post office, around 140,000 of the 160,000 employees are grouped into pay groups in which the basic monthly salary is between 2,108 and 3,090 euros gross. It is precisely these employees who are “particularly affected by the high inflation”.

The Post emphasized that it had made “a number of concrete proposals to Verdi during the talks in Cologne, which were primarily about the building blocks and structure of the wage increases.” The basis was created in the talks to present an offer in the new round of talks at the beginning of February.

The warning strikes at the post office could still have an impact on the preparations for the repeat elections in Berlin on February 12. This does not affect the sending of election documents to Berliners, as a spokeswoman for the state election management announced. Because these papers, i.e. the election notification and, if desired, postal voting documents, would not be sent by Deutsche Post within Berlin, but by the service provider Pin AG.

However, there may be delays in sending the ballot letters back to the district election offices if postal voters use the post office for this purpose.

A spokesman for the senate administration told rbb that the state electoral authority had commissioned special logistics from the post office for the election weekend, which, according to the post office, was not affected by a strike. “Through this special logistics, all ballot letters still in DPAG’s logistics would then be delivered to the district election offices by 4 p.m. on election Sunday,” it said.

The Post and Verdi had last agreed on wage increases in September 2020. At the time, the agreement, with a term of 28 months, stipulated, among other things, that wages and salaries would increase by three percent on January 1, 2021 and by another two percent on January 1, 2022. Deutsche Post, which operates around the world and employs around 590,000 people worldwide, has long since made the lion’s share of its profits outside of the traditional mail business in Germany.

Overall, the group is expecting a record operating profit (EBIT) of EUR 8.4 billion for 2022, with the letter and parcel business in Germany expected to contribute around EUR 1.35 billion.

When it comes to letters, Swiss Post is struggling with declining mail volumes and shrinking income while costs are rising. In addition, complaints from customers have increased recently. For the time being, however, the Bonn-based company cannot turn the price screw. Because the postage for a standard letter, currently EUR 0.85, has been fixed by the regulator, the Federal Network Agency, as planned until the end of 2024.

That is why the group “cannot simply pass on cost increases to our customers”. At an average of 7.9 percent, the rate of inflation in Germany last year was higher than it had been since the Federal Republic came into existence.

Broadcast: rbb24 Brandenburg aktuell, January 19th, 2023, 7.30 p.m