September 17, 2024 | Social
From October 9 to 14, La Poste is holding its professional elections. Nearly 170,000 employees and civil servants of the company will be able to vote, in order to elect the representatives who will defend their rights. While the company with the blue and yellow logo must face a structural decrease in postal flow, the diversification of the company’s activity and the transformations of its production model expose some of its employees to a loss of meaning, as well as to exacerbated hardship at work. Chantal Bonhoure, the president of the CFTC La Poste, returns here to the key measures that the union will defend during the upcoming vote, with a view to preserving the working conditions and health of employees.
Chantal, first of all, these 2024 professional elections are of a new kind at La Poste. Can you explain to us what is changing?
In short, the mode of representation of postal workers will no longer be that of the civil service, as was the case until now. For the first time, union representatives will therefore join social and economic committees (CSE). A trade union organization will now have to gather 10% of the votes to be represented in these bodies and to assert the method and themes of social dialogue which seem to it to best defend the interests of employees.
La Poste is a company that is currently undergoing significant transformations. Do these changes increase the importance of social dialogue?
This is a certainty and it says a lot about the importance of the upcoming election. For years – particularly because of the continued decline of its mail service – The Post Office is changing enormouslyThe company has largely diversified its activities, following the successive launches of La Poste Mobile, the transport company Geo Post, La Banque Postale, the acquisition of CNP Assurances, etc. This has enormous consequences on a daily basis, in particular for the 70,000 postal workers that the CFTC and the other social partners represent.
How do these postal workers experience these changes?
They are adapting, but the pace – which reflects the commercialization of practices within the company – is difficult to keep up. Postal workers are very attached to preserving their public service mission and the human side of their profession. I would say that it is even the most important thing for them. Let us remember that the majority shareholder of the Post Office remains the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations (66%). In short, it is the State, which still makes it a unique company today. We believe in particular that the Post Office should not have only an economic dimension, but this is not really the current trend.
That’s to say ?
Overall, employees are echoing a Taylorization of practices that does not always seem compatible with the meaning they want to give to their work. The arduousness of the jobs – both physical and psychological – is increasing, when the resources allocated by the company to the preservation of health at work are sometimes cut. As a union, we had a mandate in recent years to be invited to the negotiating table for all the major issues: salaries, agreements on quality of life at work, those relating to employee carers, disability, etc. The CFTC did everything possible to protect employees as best it could. Now, we also think that management can and must go furtheron certain essential aspects of social dialogue.
Like purchasing power for example?
Yes, especially because the latest salary increases have not kept pace with inflation. The CFTC is therefore asking that the salary scales be reviewed. Furthermore, we also campaigned for the introduction of a 13th month and a seniority bonus.. Not only for financial reasons, but also for employee loyalty. Postmen have modest salaries and rewarding them for their longevity within the company would be a way to retain them.
In addition, the CFTC is campaigning for the maintenance of an end-of-career scheme that will allow postal workers to retire earlier or gradually cease their activity. La Poste has the means to do so: let us recall that the group remains profitable. In this regard, we do not understand why certain extra-salary benefits are being revised downwards.
Download the CFTC La Poste proposals in PDF
For these professional elections, the CFTC seems to be emphasizing the need to strengthen measures that protect employees’ health at work.
Yes, it is a priority for us. Because we have observed a deterioration of certain devices, which allowed employees to be protected. For example, after the Covid crisis, the company agreement that guaranteed them full payment of their salary for 90 days in the event of illness was revised to 45 days. All the other reformist social partners – with the exception of the CFTC – signed this agreement – on the pretext that, if it was not initialed, management would revise its proposal even further downwards.
But for the CFTC, all this was much too abrupt. We thought that we had to first give ourselves time to set up corrective actions at the level of quality of life at workto reduce the number of sick leave. For us, the employer is also partly responsible here: the number of sick leave is still partly linked to working conditions. This is why we are calling for an end to this loss of salary after 46 days of illness.
You just mentioned a deterioration in working conditions. How did this manifest itself in concrete terms?
First, there was a redefinition of the concept of arduousness. A list of arduous functions at the Post Office had been defined by the social partners, but management unilaterally revised this index, removing certain arduous functions. Then, we are witnessing what can be assimilated to a form of robotization and increasing Taylorization of work : it has been computer calculated that a specific time is needed to send a registered letter and the company expects the worker to meet this requirement.
But that is an average, a prerequisite that dehumanizes the activity: at the Post Office, you may find yourself facing a person with a disability, who does not speak French, a dissatisfied customer, elderly people, etc. In short, people who require more time to process their request. That is not taken into account by the software that measures workers’ activity: employees no longer have the flexibility they had before and that adds a lot of stress.
This generates more psychological pressure at work.
Absolutely. The problem is that this pressure is not officially considered a factor of hardship. At the Post Office, a customer service representative or a bank advisor who experiences a form of commercial pressure for 10 years, who must report on figures again and again, undergoes a form of mental constraint. In this regard, the CFTC requests that the concept of hardship at the Post Office takes into account psychosocial risks and commercial pressure.
More generally, what vision of the Post Office does the CFTC want to defend?
You know, I think that the Post Office reflects French society well, in general. There are 170,000 of us, and the workforce is aging (The average age at the Post Office is around 47, Editor’s note), but people are resilient. They are willing to adapt to some changes in the business, but not to sacrifice the meaning they want to give to their work. For the CFTC, La Poste puts human relations first and foremostand I believe that this is what we must preserve at all costs.
AC
