Union wants delay in opening up Dutch post market
The Netherlands should open its postal market to full competition only when all workers in the sector get minimum wages and have labour contracts, a senior official at Dutch union FNV Bondgenoten said on Tuesday.
“We do not want workers to pay for an open market,” Jan de Jong, an FNV Bondgenoten director responsible for road transport and haulage affairs, told Reuters in an interview.
“At this moment, lots of postal workers do not have minimum wages. Workers at Selekt Mail and Sandd earn less than 40 percent of minimum wages. They only work two, three days a week. There should be a level playing field for everybody,” he said.
The Dutch government postponed the full opening of the market, due in January, in part because of the introduction of a minimum wage for postal workers in Germany, which it said impedes competition and where TNT had hoped to expand its operations.
It also cited ongoing talks on labour conditions for postmen in the Netherlands. The economy ministry is expected to update Parliament by this week on the situation.
Dominant mail company TNT NV has the remaining monopoly for letters up to 50 grammes, with the market estimated to be worth about 1 billion euros in 2007.
TNT’s workers have employment contracts, but rivals Sandd and Deutsche Post’s Dutch unit Selekt Mail usually do not offer contracts and pay postal workers by the number of items delivered.
This situation should only be tolerated in the short term until the companies are able to compete more effectively with TNT, said de Jong.
The Netherlands should open its postal market to full competition only when all workers in the sector get minimum wages and have labour contracts, a senior official at Dutch union FNV Bondgenoten said on Tuesday.
“We do not want workers to pay for an open market,” Jan de Jong, an FNV Bondgenoten director responsible for road transport and haulage affairs, told Reuters in an interview.
“At this moment, lots of postal workers do not have minimum wages. Workers at Selekt Mail and Sandd earn less than 40 percent of minimum wages. They only work two, three days a week. There should be a level playing field for everybody,” he said.
The Dutch government postponed the full opening of the market, due in January, in part because of the introduction of a minimum wage for postal workers in Germany, which it said impedes competition and where TNT had hoped to expand its operations.
It also cited ongoing talks on labour conditions for postmen in the Netherlands. The economy ministry is expected to update Parliament by this week on the situation.
Dominant mail company TNT NV has the remaining monopoly for letters up to 50 grammes, with the market estimated to be worth about 1 billion euros in 2007.
TNT’s workers have employment contracts, but rivals Sandd and Deutsche Post’s Dutch unit Selekt Mail usually do not offer contracts and pay postal workers by the number of items delivered.
This situation should only be tolerated in the short term until the companies are able to compete more effectively with TNT, said de Jong.
“In three, four years, people should be able to work with minimum wages, labour contracts. We say start with the newcomers, offer them minimum wages and labour contracts and then give current workers the option to have contracts or not,” he said.
Unions and the postal companies have scheduled three meetings in March and April to discuss labour conditions.
