Tag: France

The chairman of France’s state-owned postal service La Poste said Monday its 17,000 agency network will to be run as an individual division. Chairman Jean-Paul Bailly said the move is part of a far-reaching plan to reorganize the network and increase the number of products and services sold by La Poste to individuals. From January 2005 the branch network will stand alongside La Poste’s three existing divisions: mail, parcels and financial services.

Trades unions at La Poste yesterday ended 18 months of negotiations with the French post office by agreeing to the state-owned group’s planned Euros 3.4bn (Dollars 4.3bn) modernisation of struggling mail operations. The agreement, signed by three unions representing 59.5 per cent of staff, is a big step in La Poste’s drive to cut costs and improve the quality of its service ahead of the liberalisation of Europe’s mail market in 2009. A fourth union is expected to sign today. “This shows the strong engagement of La Poste’s management to show that postal workers are an integral part of the modernisation process being undertaken by the group,” said Raymond Redding, deputy head of mail operations, which account for 60 per cent of its Euros 18bn revenues.