German postal workers protest market opening

Some 30,000 German postal workers protested in Berlin on Monday against the planned opening of the country’s postal services market to competition on January 1, 2008.

The Deutsche Post workers came from across the country to protest against opening the local market, a year before the planned liberalisation of the entire European postal market.

A spokeswoman for Germany’s Ver.di trade union, Cornelia Hass, said it was demanding that the German market be opened at the same time as those in the rest of the continent.

Ver.di has warned that doing so earlier could lead to the loss of jobs.
Deutsche Post holds a monopoly on the delivery of letters weighing less than 50 grammes.

After earlier waves of postal liberalisation in 1997 and 2002, the markets for the delivery of packages and letters weighing more than that are already open to competition.