Union calls for 4.5-percent wage increases at Deutsche Post
Ver.di, the gigantic services sector labour union, wants wage increases of up to 4.5 percent for employees at Deutsche Post, the semi-privatised German postal service, Ver.di board member Rolf Buettner said in a newspaper interview published Monday.
The union would be demanding wage increases of 3.5-4.5 percent for the transport sector as a whole, Buettner told the daily Die Welt.
“And I’ll recommend Deutsche Post employees to set their demand at the top end of this range in the 2006 wage round,” the Ver.di official said.
“2006 is not going to be a year of modesty in wage rises,” Buettner added.
“Dividends have increased every year, so have profits and management’s wages. Now it’s the turn of the employees.”
The current wage agreement for Deutsche Post’s 170,000 employees is scheduled to expire at the end of April.
On Friday, IG Metall, the powerful union for the engineering and metalworking sectors, formally announced it would call for wage increases of five percent for the 3.4 million workers in the sector.
