Itella Group will begin statutory labour negotiations in Finland this April, with approximately 390 permanent employees being made redundant.

The majority of the redundancies will be in Helsinki, but other localities will also be affected. In Finland, Itella employs 23,500 people.

An Itella statement said: “By cutting costs and enhancing operations, Itella is preparing itself for the ongoing structural change in the postal industry.

Furthermore, the global economic downturn has had a considerable impact on the demand for Itella’s services. During the first part of the year, logistics and post volumes have substantially decreased in comparison to last year.”

“Also in the long run, Itella faces significant challenges to be able to maintain the national service as it is. In the next few years, the entire European postal industry will face a major structural change as postal industry competition will be promoted through a directive reform. In addition to communication going electronic, there will also be legislative changes, both of which will affect labor needs. With the ongoing mail sorting network development and long-term investment program, Itella will create the preconditions for long-term operating opportunities.”

“It can be seen in Itella’s operations that customers, such as newspaper and magazine publishers and mail order companies, are facing difficult challenges. Our only alternative is to adjust our operations to correspond to the customer demand and needs at the moment as well as in the long term. Postal services are funded entirely with income received from customers; Finland uses no tax money to finance postal services.”

Jukka Alho, president and CEO, said: “For the personnel, the statutory labour negotiations are an extremely unfortunate matter. Although we have already been preparing for the necessary changes, this will not alleviate the disappointment of the personnel when regrettable decisions are made that concern them personally. We aim to use all opportunities to cushion the impact of the changes. In our experience, both the age structure of the personnel and relocation opportunities to other assignments inside the company has always brought some relief to the situation.”

Source: Itella

Tags: Finland, Itella, Royal Mail, SCM/Logistics, Worldwide