From next Monday until March 8, union members at the post office will vote on an indefinite industrial action. After the negotiations failed at the end of last week, Verdi initiated the ballot. The required majority is considered certain, so that letter and parcel delivery services will be suspended from mid-March. The union also announced a day-long strike at most German airports this Friday. The BER is not affected.
Verdi is calling for an income increase of 15 percent for the 160,000 employees at the post office, citing the high inflation rate and the company’s record profit of 8.4 billion euros last year as the reason. The Post had recently offered a monthly payment of the tax and duty-free inflation premium of 150 euros from January to December.
From January to December 2024, another 100 euros were planned. In total, this results in exactly the 3,000 euros for both years that the federal government offered employers and collective bargaining partners last summer as an inflation compensation payment. This special payment is granted once and is therefore not a permanent increase in income, which is why Verdi rejects the inflation premium in principle. The Swiss Post negotiators had responded to these concerns by including a permanent increase in the charges of 150 euros as of January 1 and a further increase of 190 euros from December 2024 in the offer package. Overall, the income of post office employees from December 2024 would be 340 euros higher than at present.
The employer offer increases the risk of further real wage losses.
Andrea Kocsis, Verdi’s chief negotiator at Post
“The offer presented by the employers is far from our demands. In particular, the long term of 24 months and the small increase in wages in 2024 increase the risk of further real wage losses, ”said the deputy Verdi chairwoman and negotiator Andrea Kocsis on Tuesday evening in Berlin. According to the union’s calculations, the employers’ offer is 9.9 percent, but to balance the rate of inflation in 2022 and 2023, 14.9 percent is needed. While the employer’s proposal is “historically high,” Kocsis said the inflation rate is also historically high. Around 105,000 of the 160,000 pay scale employees at Swiss Post are mail carriers whose wages are between 2,300 and 3,090 euros.
At least 500 euros more
Those on lower incomes will benefit disproportionately from the proposed increases by fixed amounts instead of wage percentages. The Post wants to increase the attractiveness of the delivery, and Verdi can implement the claim to provide the lower income groups particularly affected by inflation with significantly more money. That’s why the union is demanding a minimum increase of 500 euros a month for the 2.5 million public sector employees in the municipalities and the federal government. The percentage requirement here is 10.5 percent.
On February 22, the trade unions – in addition to Verdi, the civil servants’ association and the unions of teachers and police officers are involved – meet with the municipal employers and the Federal Minister of the Interior, Nancy Faeser (SPD), for the second round of negotiations. Verdi has announced further warning strikes for the days before. The union members at the airports are called upon to do this next Friday. The strike begins in the early hours of the morning and ends on Saturday night. The airports in Frankfurt (Main), Munich, Stuttgart, Hamburg, Dortmund, Hanover and Bremen are affected. In addition to the negotiations for public sector employees, the background to this is the working conditions of ground handling services and nationwide collective bargaining for aviation security.
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The dispute in the public service will come to a head before the third hearing at the end of March. Then the citizens have to be prepared for significant warning strikes in local transport, in garbage disposal and in hospitals. Verdi justifies the 10.5 percent requirement with the need to catch up after two lean years and the shortage of skilled workers. A total of 300,000 positions could currently not be filled, around 170,000 of them in daycare centers and 15,000 in local public transport. By 2030, public transport would be short of 130,000 employees. “People must also be able to afford to work in the public sector,” affirmed Christine Behle, Deputy Chairwoman of Verdi, the union’s wage demand.
With 1.857 million members, Verdi is the largest German trade union after IG Metall (2.1 million). Last year there were 110,400 entries and 147,300 exits; premium income nevertheless remained stable at EUR 490 million (up EUR 6.8 million). Verdi boss Frank Werneke explains the drop in membership with the high inflation rate: many employees saved themselves the union dues and resigned. On the other hand, the baby boomers went into retirement. The multi-industry trade union Verdi concludes around 3,000 collective agreements a year. In addition to the public service and the post office, negotiations for the retail and wholesale trade with around five million employees will also be pending next spring.
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