Deutsche Post employees have started warning strikes in the first federal states. Consumers must currently expect delays and delivery stops here.
- Verdi has called on postal workers to go on warning strikes for today and tomorrow
- Distribution centers in Brandenburg, Berlin and Saarland are currently on strike
- We’ll update this article if more states are added
Deutsche Post employees in Berlin and Brandenburg went on a warning strike on Friday. Around 300 pay-scale employees stopped working during the night, as Verdi department head Postal Services Berlin-Brandenburg Benita Unger said on Friday morning. The regional mail distribution centers in Berlin-Tempelhof, Schönefeld, Stahnsdorf and Hennigsdorf as well as in the parcel centers in Rüdersdorf, Börnicke and Ludwigsfelde were affected.
“We have called for a warning strike across the board in Berlin and Brandenburg,” said Unger. She assumes that the around 3,000 employees in so-called delivery bases in Berlin and Brandenburg would also follow suit. After an unsuccessful second round of collective bargaining, the union decided to go on strike for two days.
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Deutsche Post has a record year, but employees are not rewarded
Left Federal Chairwoman Janine Wissler visited a post office in Berlin-Neukölln on Friday morning and spoke to the strikers there. The Post is making record profits, while the employees who would have made it would have to strike to compensate for inflation, Wissler told the German Press Agency.
2022 was the most successful year in the company’s history, but he was not willing to let his employees participate in the company’s success. “If you were to calculate the 8.4 billion profits for the 160,000 employees at Deutsche Post in Germany, the mathematical result would be that you could pay 52,000 euros to each employee.” That shows how huge the profit is.
Verdi is demanding a 15 percent wage increase in the negotiations. The first round of negotiations took place on January 6th, the second on Wednesday and Thursday in Cologne. The Post board of directors considers the union’s demand unrealistic. The company announced that it would submit an offer at the third round of negotiations on February 8th and 9th.
Postal workers are also on strike in Saarland, and other federal states are likely to follow
Even those who are waiting for letters and parcels in Saarland must be prepared for delays on Friday. Deutsche Post deliverers “in large parts of Saarland” stopped work on Friday, as the Verdi union announced early in the morning.
A warning strike had already begun across Germany in postal and parcel centers on Thursday evening after the second round of collective bargaining for around 160,000 employees ended without a result. Other federal states could also be on strike.
According to the information, there are warning strikes in addition to Rostock in the cities of Güstrow and the surrounding area, Waren and the surrounding area, Neubrandenburg North, Greifswald, Ticino and the surrounding area and Schwerin in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
In Rhineland-Palatinate and Hesse, the delivery staff are also on strike
Because of a warning strike, postal workers in large parts of Rhineland-Palatinate stopped working on Friday. In addition to the employees in the post offices, the delivery staff also followed the call for a strike, as the Verdi union announced.
A spokesman for Deutsche Post spoke on Friday afternoon of a “partial work stoppage” by postal workers in Rhineland-Palatinate. Not every employee is on strike and the post is also delivered in many places.
People in Hesse also have to be prepared for longer waiting times for letter and parcel deliveries on Friday. Across Hesse, postal workers took part in the warning strike and stopped working in the morning, according to a spokesman for the Verdi union. “The distribution of letters and parcels is massively disrupted,” said Andreas Jung, Head of Verdi Hessen, on Friday morning. In addition to the employees in the post offices, the delivery staff also followed the call for a strike.
Now also strikes in the south-east of Germany
Around 5,500 Deutsche Post employees stopped working in Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia on Friday. The Verdi union had called for the warning strike. “It will continue tomorrow,” announced spokesman Norms Schulze. Accordingly, Verdi expects up to 6,500 employees to participate on Saturday.
Locations in Leipzig, Dresden, Magdeburg and Erfurt are affected by the strike. According to Schulze, on Friday there were around 2,500 participants in Saxony and 1,500 in Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia. The union had initially called on workers in the letter and parcel centers to go on strike that night. With the beginning of the early shift, postmen and parcel deliverers were also called. The warning strike is expected to last until 11:59 p.m. on Saturday.
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