Leipzig – If you are waiting for an urgent delivery with DHL, you may have to wait longer. Due to a strike at the air freight hub, some packages will probably fall by the wayside for the time being!
The communications union DPV (DPVKOM) called on more than 6,000 employees at DHL Hub Leipzig GmbH to go on strike at Leipzig/Halle Airport on Friday evening.
“On April 25, we asked Deutsche Post AG to enter into collective bargaining with us. With our warning strike, we want to emphasize our demands,” said DPVKOM national chair Christina Dahlhaus.
According to the union, the work stoppage would result in considerable delays in the processing of several thousand express shipments.
Accordingly, the strike should be from Friday evening, 7 p.m. to Saturday morning, 8 a.m. For DHL, this is the main working time at Germany’s most important hub: every night, hundreds of tons of freight are unloaded, sorted and reloaded within a very short time at the Leipzig/Halle cargo airport. Hundreds of thousands of shipments are sent in this way to 220 countries around the world.
Leipzig/Halle Airport is the most important hub for DHL
DHL assured on Saturday morning: “The strike did not result in any significant restrictions in the operational business, customers are unlikely to notice any effects,” said spokesman Dr. Hans-Christian Mennenga to BILD.
In the collective bargaining round, DPVKOM wants to push through a linear increase in the monthly table wages by 12 percent and a wage increase of 500 euros for all wage groups. In addition, the full 13th month’s salary should be paid from the first year of employment. Irrespective of the collective bargaining round, the 100 percent subsidiary of Deutsche Post DHL is also to pay the tax- and social security-free inflation compensation premium of 3,000 euros to its employees.
“These tariff demands are more than justified. After more than 30 years, an east-west alignment for the same work is more than overdue, anything else would be disrespectful,” said the DPVKOM boss.
For example, the employees at DHL Hub Leipzig GmbH in some salary groups earn up to 700 euros less per month than their colleagues in the West tariff zone for comparable jobs.