Collective bargaining kicks off: 15 percent more for postmen?

Postmen and couriers in Germany earn much less than the average. That should change: the ver.di union is demanding 15% more wages in collective bargaining negotiations that start today.

Deutsche Post postmen and couriers will receive 15% more money. The ver.di union has once again reiterated this demand for 160,000 employees in Germany. Collective bargaining with the company begins today.

Post criticizes question as ‘far from reality’

Deutsche Post rejects the 15% requirement as “unrealistic”. “In the upcoming collective bargaining negotiations, it will be important to find the balance between wage increases for our employees and economic viability for the company,” a spokesman said before the negotiations began. He stressed that the company must remain financially viable for investment.

The chief negotiator of ver.di, Andrea Kocsis, instead considers the large wage increase “necessary, just and feasible”. “Employees urgently need inflation compensation and also expect a share in the company’s success,” said the trade unionist, referring to the recently brilliant figures of the globally active group. Deutsche Post expects an operating result of 8.4 billion euros for 2022 and is thus heading towards the most successful year in the company’s history.

Strikes not excluded

Postal workers have been working “under maximum stress” in recent years and now expect “permanent financial recognition of their work, which is so important to all of us,” Kocsis stressed. At the start of negotiations, both sides should only be scanned for the first time. Nearly two weeks later, the next round of negotiations is expected to continue.

The relevant ver.di collective bargaining commission had already ruled on the application in November. Thereafter, employees are expected to receive 15% more salary for a twelve-month period. The degree must be “significantly higher than last years salary contracts”. Furthermore, according to the union’s ideas, training allowances and students’ salaries must be increased by 200 euros per month for each year of training.

Even negotiator Kocsis hasn’t ruled out strikes to achieve the goals. On December 31, 2022, ver.di withdrew the previous tariff regulation of the Swiss Post. This also ended the peace obligation. The previous agreement of September 2020, with a duration of 28 months, stipulated, among other things, that wages and salaries would increase by 3% on 1 January 2021 and by a further 2% on 1 January 2022.

Significantly lower wages than the economy as a whole

According to the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), wages in the post and parcel sector have risen much less since 2011 than in the economy as a whole. Postmen have not benefited much from the boom in online and mail order sales in recent years.

According to Destatis, full-time employees in postal, courier and express services earned an average of 3,022 euros gross per month in 2021 (without price adjustment), or six percent more than a decade earlier. Over the same period, in the economy as a whole, earnings unadjusted for prices increased by 23.8 percent, about four times as much.

According to statisticians, last year the average gross monthly income for postal, courier and express services was around €1,000 below the average for the economy as a whole, which was €4,100. Furthermore, workers in the sector often work unusual hours. Around 60% also had to work on weekends in 2021 and one in seven couriers had to work between 11pm and 6am. For comparison: Across all industries, only one in eleven employees worked at night and 19% at the weekend.