The week that was: 14 September, 2012
Rounding up the biggest stories of the week from the pages of Post&Parcel, including a rate rise for Deutsche Post, La Poste’s bid to transform its working conditions and a new direction for Canada Post’s epost…
First German standard letter rate rise for 15 years
Germany’s standard domestic letter rate is set to increase in at the beginning of next year, for the first time since 1997.
Deutsche Post filed its annual request for postal rate changes with national regulators this week, seeking a 5% increase in standard domestic letters up to 20g in weight in 2013, to 58 cents per piece.
It said there was no option other than to increase its postal rates in the light of the current “challenging” economic situation.
La Poste plans to hire 15,000 workers by 2014
La Poste Group announced plans to hire an additional 5,000 postal workers in response to a major review of working conditions within the company.
The French postal operator revealed it will recruit 15,000 people by 2014, instead of the 10,000 originally planned, in the wake of the Kaspar Report recommendations issued this week.
The summer-long review of quality of life for La Poste employees by the former union boss Jean Kaspar, prompted by two staff suicides earlier this year, concluded on Tuesday that a big improvement in social dialogue within the Group was needed as the company goes through major modernisation initiatives.
Canada Post’s epost becomes digital mail platform
Canada Post officially launched the next generation of its digital mail service, epost, this week.
Originally launched back in the year 2000, epost has since become the largest bill consolidation service in Canada with around 7.7m residents registered. Canada Post is now transforming it into a full digital mailbox service, which will offer more all-round functionality including the sending and receiving of other important documents securely and digitally.
Also this week, Australia Post revealed that its new Digital MailBox service will be launched next month.
And finally…
UPS has 1,491 of them, DHL has 870, USPS has 758 and FedEx has 113. What are they? Patents. A white paper published this week by Ursa Major Associates’ John Callan, along with John Cronin and Nathan Doudera of ipCapital Group, argues that USPS and others in the postal space could find significant opportunities in the world of patents and intellectual property…
