Social dialogue on postal liberalisation hits dead end

Luxembourg is obliged to introduce postal liberalisation, which has been imposed at European Union level. The Luxembourg post and telecommunications company has already announced its intention to reduce costs in order to remain competitive in relation to any new operators in the market. Trade unions are concerned about the restructuring measures to be announced. They want to protect workers’ rights and preserve the distribution of the mail as a public service.

Preparing for liberalisation

Directive 2008/06/EC amending Directive 97/67/EC with regard to the full accomplishment of the internal market of Community postal services was adopted on 20 February 2008. It envisages the complete liberalisation of the postal services market by 31 December 2010 at the latest. However, 11 countries, including Luxembourg, are benefiting from an extension until 31 December 2012. At present, P&T Luxembourg is continuing to handle national and international mailing pieces weighing less than 50 grammes. After the complete liberalisation of the postal market, any operator will be able to collect, transport, sort and distribute mailing pieces of any weight.

For the company, certain doubts remain regarding the situation. Thus, in its last annual report, P&T Luxembourg indicated that the social impact of liberalisation was difficult to evaluate at that stage because – although the European Commission requires social criteria to be respected – these have not yet been clearly defined. For Luxembourg, the company fears that liberalisation might involve a race to the lowest pay and this risk seems real considering the difference between the legal minimum wage and the average pay level within P&T. Thus, the public-owned company acknowledges that complete liberalisation of the postal market represents a challenge at social, commercial and financial levels.

Postal liberalisation therefore will probably entail structural changes, with the creation of a limited company, which would unbundle from the post office the other telecommunications services, namely telephony and the internet, as well as activities of the mobile phone operator LuxGSM. Some 300 members of P&T Luxembourg’s staff could be transferred to the newly created company. From 2013, the reform of the postal service should entail the presence of more employees with private contractual status than workers with civil servant status. This means that the civil servants will keep their status, but that they will be progressively replaced at retirement by employees with private contractual status. In the long term, it is a question for P&T Luxembourg of reducing its costs.

Reorganisation concerns trade unions

The postal sorting function will probably be reorganised with a greater demand for staff flexibility and, in particular, a change in the working hours of the postal delivery rounds. For the trade unions, the matter is primarily a question of protecting workers’ rights and of preserving the distribution of the mail as a public service. They are particularly concerned that, in the future, the mail might no longer be delivered every day in the isolated northern regions of the country. By 2013, postal delivery workers with civil servant status should be replaced by mail distributors with employee status. Just as in France, where postal workers fear that the liberalisation of the market is an open door to privatisation, the subject is highly sensitive in Luxembourg.

Dialogue at a standstill

The Luxembourg Trade Union Federation of Postmen and Postal and Telecommunication Workers (Fédération syndicaliste des Facteurs et des Travailleurs des P&T Luxembourg, FSFL) has had meetings with the P&T management on several occasions and, according to the FSFL president, the dialogue has been merely one way.

No new meeting with the P&T management is envisaged; the dialogue is blocked for the time being. FSFL is raising the possibility of approaching the Disputes Committee. However, the P&T management is insisting that nothing has yet been decided in respect of how to tackle the process and effects of liberalisation.

The first decisions in this regard should be made in March 2010. A bill is expected concerning the application of the European directive relating to the liberalisation of the postal service. Depending on the conditions that are adopted, all of the trade unions are resolutely awaiting further developments in order to defend the public status of the post office and its staff, and the quality of the public service, which – according to the unions – are under threat.

Odette Wlodarski, Prevent