Employees of the Belgian Post office Bpost are taking industrial action in protest at the company’s reorganization plans. Luc Tegethoff of the liberal public service union VSOA told VRT Radio 1 that while newspapers will be delivered today it could well be a very different story with regard to letters and parcels.
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Disruption as postal workers stage a 24-hour strike
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“All the parcels have remained at the sorting offices. At the Brussel X sorting office 80% of delivery staff is absent and there are few staff present at the Antwerp X and the Ghent X sorting offices either”.
The disruption is greater still in Wallonia as the sorting office there have been blockaded, which means that even if staff do turn up for work nothing will be able to leave.
What is the issue?
Fewer and fewer letters are being sent, while at the same time the boom in e-commerce means that more and more parcels are being sent. Bpost is being forced to reinvent itself in order to survive.
"We have already gone through quite a few reorganisations and we understand that reorganisations are necessary. However, management is often somewhat ambiguous. We are going through a reorganiation now, but what if we attact a couple of big e-commerce customers. Will we need to repeal the reorganisation measures?”
Bpost was dealt a major blow when the e-commerce giant Amazon decided to deliver its own parcels in Belgium. Wallonia in particular is heavily impacted by the reorganisation. The reorganisation plans do not include any forced redundancies.
Mr Tegethoff told the VRT that Bpost should do more to persuade big e-commerce companies to become customers.
"We have a lot to offer as a postal services company, it is up to management to make this clear to these companies”.