Tag: La Poste

The trade unions of the French railways (SNCF), post office (La Poste) and the Paris airport authority Aeroports de Paris (ADP) have issued a joint warning of their intention to hold a strike on Thursday in protest against proposed changes to the three companies. SNCF employees, for example, oppose the rail operator’s plans to restructure its freight division, while those of La Poste’s 130 mail-sorting centres are stopping work to, in their own words, defend their future and their jobs.

Three French trade unions, CGT, SUD and FO, have urged the 20,000 staff employed in back offices of the financial services of La Poste, the French postal service, to organise strikes in order to protest against plans to set up a postal bank. This is the first time that staff of the company’s 19 regional financial service centres will be able to say whether or not they are prepared to accept the creation of the new postal bank.

Jean-Paul Bailly, chairman of the French post office, La Poste, said that it is impossible for his organisation to reveal the number of jobs which it plans to cut, given that the issue has yet to be discussed with staff and local political figures. La Poste’s unions, on the other hand, claim that it could shed 60,000 posts by 2012 if it refills only half of those vacated between now and then.

La Poste, the French national postal services group, has posted a sixfold increase in net profit for 2003, to 202m euros. However, as chairman Jean-Paul Bailly pointed out, the group is still only moderately profitable and lags behind its main European counterparts. Turnover increased by 3.4 per cent last year, to 18bn euros, but fell short of expectations.

Jean-Marc Pailhol has been appointed commercial director of the financial clients’ division of the French post office, La Poste. Mr Pailhol was formerly head of the individual clients’ branch of the French co-operative banking group Banques Populaires.