Deutsche Post confirms to cut 7,500 jobs by 2004
Deutsche Post, the German mail and logistics group, on Tuesday said it would cut about 7,500 jobs from its transport division by 2004 and outsource the affected functions, in an attempt to reduce its wage bill by E100m ($88m) annually.
The moves were agreed by Post management and representatives of the Verdi union at the end of last week. Talks about the cutbacks, which unions had claimed threatened 12,000 jobs, began earlier this year.
There will be no compulsory redundancies as Post employees are formally protected from job cuts until 2004, under an agreement won last year by the postal workers union, which later became part of Verdi.
Rather, the cuts will take advantage of natural wastage and be phased over four years, with a sizeable number of drivers to be transferred to the chronically understaffed mail delivery departments.
The cuts and the outsourcing are the German group’s latest attempts to inject some dynamism into its lacklustre letter delivery business.
Having spent more than DM8bn (E4.09bn, $3.58bn) on modernising sorting technology during the 1990s, Klaus Zumwinkel, Deutsche Post chief executive, had only two options left for increasing profitability at the mail division, said observers – to increase revenues and cut staff costs.
At the end of last year, Deutsche Post employed 280,000 people, of which about 74,000 are still civil servants.
Those losing their jobs will be mainly drivers who transport mail between the regional collection and sorting offices. This task will be outsourced.
Delivery to the final recipient will remain exclusively in the hands of Post employees, said the company.
Management and unions agreed that the state-controlled group would have to keep a transport service with at least 4,500 of its own employees until 2007.
It was also agreed that, between 2004 and 2007, there would be no further outsourcing of Post transport capacity.
Last year, the group’s workforce grew by about 8 per cent, following several acquisitions since 1999.
The purchase of Air Express International in the US by Danzas, a Post subsidiary, added 7,700 employees alone.
