Wage negotiations for around 170,000 workers at German postal service Deutsche Post were due to start on Wednesday, with the Verdi union calling for a 7% pay increase.
Persistent staggering costs and food prices “can only be overcome with significant wage increases for workers,” Verdi chief negotiator Andrea Kocsis said in a statement published ahead of the collective bargaining on Tuesday.
The vast majority of post office workers still earn less than the average income in Germany, she added.
The union’s demands also include additional days of leave over a period of 12 months to compensate for the high physical strain that nine in 10 postal workers are exposed to, Verdi said, for example when carrying parcels weighing up to 31.5 kilograms and in extreme work again. conditions.
“The absenteeism rate is at a record high,” says Kocsis.
Deutsche Post said the unions’ demands were at odds with the company’s reality, citing high investment demands and declining letter volumes.
Deutsche Post also said it had increased salaries by an average of 11.5% since the last agreement, but added that it would participate constructively in the negotiations anyway.
Deutsche Post, a division of global logistics giant DHL Group, was created from the former state-owned German postal service. But domestic mail delivery is now only a small – and generally unprofitable – part of the company’s business.
The company significantly increased its postage rate around the turn of the year, raising the price for a standard letter from €0.85 ($0.87) to €0.95.
