Tag: Deutsche Post

German postal workers may win minimum wage

Posted by | Aug 21, 2007 | |

German postal workers may be subject to a minimum wage from early next year after the ruling coalition parties reached a late-night deal to extend basic pay levels, Labor Minister Franz Muentefering said.
Muentefering said he expects postal services employers and the Ver.di labor union to agree this year on a minimum wage, a precondition for the government to make the pay level binding for postal workers across the country as a whole.
A statutory minimum wage may be good news for Deutsche Post AG, Europe’s biggest postal service, as it prepares for the end of its letter-delivery monopoly, its most profitable business, on Jan. 1. The company has forecast domestic competition will trim earnings at its mail division by as much as 20 percent by 2009. Minimum wage regulations would also apply to competitors such as Pin AG.
“The postal monopoly will be phased out, that can’t be changed, but we’ll introduce a minimum wage and that’s something we can get done this autumn,” Muentefering said.

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PIN picks up Berlin city mail contract

Posted by | Aug 14, 2007 | |

prestigious mail contract from the Berlin city government.

PIN Mail, its Berlin-based subsidiary, has retained the Berlin contract following a tender, the company announced. The contract runs for 12 months with an option to extend it for a further year up to a maximum of three years.

PIN will deliver some 28 million letters a year covering all official documents up to a weight of 1kg. The contract is worth EUR 12.6 million in annual revenues.

“The renewed contract for PIN confirms the confidence of the state of Berlin in the quality of our service,” said Axel Stirl, managing director of PIN Mail. The company employs 1,000 staff in Berlin.

The news follows criticism by Deutsche Post chairman Klaus Zumwinkel of low wages at rival mail firms such as PIN Group and TNT Post. PIN Group chief executive Günter Thiel told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in an interview that he expected other German cities to follow the example of Berlin. In contrast, a Deutsche Post spokesman played down the importance of the Berlin contract, the newspaper added.

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Deutsche Post in uproar over planned market changes

Posted by | Aug 9, 2007 | |

At the end of this year, the remains of Germany’s postal monopoly are slated to be fully dismantled. But Deutsche Post says it faces a less-than-level playing field and unfair competition on the open market.

This means that starting in 2008, Finland’s postal system, for example, can expand into Germany, where the Finnish companies can concentrate on lucrative big-city markets. While facing competition from abroad in the cities, Deutsche Post will also be left to deliver mail to German rural regions — a costlier and more difficult service to provide. If Deutsche Post wants to deliver mail in Finland, however, it will be obliged to fork over 20 percent of its turnover to the Finnish state.

It is that kind of scenario, what Deutsche Post calls a very uneven playing field that is causing uproar at the former mail monopoly. The German mail carrier has a legal obligation to provide universal service, covering routes that are money making as well as those that are not.

Since the partial break up of the German postal monopoly in 1998, Germany’s governing post and telecommunications body has granted some 1,000 business licenses for delivering mail. Unlike employees at Deutsche Post, the mail carriers for these start-ups are often part-time or temporary workers, who don’t enjoy the job security or compensation rates of Deutsche Post employees.

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Deutsche Post concerned about unfair competition in Europe

Posted by | Aug 3, 2007 | |

Klaus Zumwinkel, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Deutsche Post, has expressed concerns about the failure of the liberalization of postal markets in Europe, the comprehensive and country-wide provision of postal services for Germany, job security at Deutsche Post and the social standards offered by new postal service providers.

Zumwinkel urged the German government and parliament to work vigorously to create fair competitive conditions for the full opening of the German and European postal market.

Zumwinkel said that in recent years Deutsche Post has done its homework, become one of the world’s most modern postal companies and solidly positioned itself in international business. In the current situation the course is set for the functionality of Germany’s postal service and the future of Deutsche Post, he said. Customers and employees should not be the ones to pay the price for these decisions, he said. Following the fundamental political decisions about privatization in 1989/90 and the initial public offering in 2000, the company is now facing a kind of “Postal Reform III,” Zumwinkel said. Binding regulations for the long-term development of the sector must be introduced, the chairman said.

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The Postal Market 2010 and Beyond – Emerging

Posted by | Aug 1, 2007 | |

Postcomm’s Strategy ReviewA summary of emerging themes from Postcomm’s Strategy Review
In August 2006 Postcomm published a Strategy Review document for consultation. The review looked at whether we needed to alter our regulatory policies so we can continue to protect mail users in the future – from 2010 and beyond – and yet allow mail operators the flexibility to adapt to changes in the market.

This document briefly summarises emerging themes in the responses we received to that Strategy Review document.

Full document – Postcomm’s Strategy Review. The postal market 2010 and beyond: Emerging Themes (pdf, 429KB)
What respondents told us
Royal Mail said the current regulatory framework is no longer fit for purpose and is subjecting the company to serious financial pressure. It said Postcomm should allow Royal Mail to compete in the business market without any restrictions and limit regulatory interventions to stamped mail.
Royal Mail’s competitors pointed out that Royal Mail, which is focusing hard on retaining every item of mail, enjoys the advantages of economies of scale and the unique privilege of VAT exemption. They questioned whether our current regulatory tools are sufficient to deal with Royal Mail’s market dominance.
Postcomm’s main conclusions in the emerging themes document, on which we are seeking feedback, are:

Customers are benefiting from competition. However, Royal Mail is finding the impact of competition and of new media very difficult to cope with, in part because of its slow progress in improving efficiency and in developing new services. The universal service (USO) remains profitable and is being provided to a very high quality of service.
More innovation is needed in order to exploit the changing mail market. Mail operators in the UK are not fully grasping the opportunities – or facing up to the challenges – of new communications media to the extent that some of their European and North American counterparts are. Mail has some important characteristics, such as personalisation and hand delivery, which valuably differentiate it in a digital world. If operators focus on how their mail products can add value for users, there is no reason to accept the prospect of a contracting mail market.
Postcomm reaffirms its aim to move to less detailed regulation. If Royal Mail can improve its cost transparency and respond better to the changing market, Postcomm should be able to scale back the regulatory regime from 2010 onwards.
The universal service will be secured in a changing mail market. Postcomm is responding to Royal Mail’s request to remove business products from the universal service and, in doing so, it wants to promote a wider debate as to how the scope and specification of the USO should adapt to changing social, economic and technological conditions. However, the basic right to post a stamped letter anywhere in the UK for the same price will remain at the centre of the universal service.

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