Postal workers protest on the streets

Romania’s national postal company, Posta Română, announced on 6 August 2012 that it was to take a number of steps towards restructuring the company to make it profitable. The Trade Union of Postal Workers of Romania responded by announcing that, between 10 and 27 August 2012, members would picket the company’s headquarters and the offices of the regional prefectures. Postal workers are dissatisfied with their low salaries and their worsening working conditions.

Background

Romania’s national postal service, Poşta Română (CNPR), is the country’s biggest postal services operator with a network of 7,100 post offices. In 2011, it employed around 33,000 worker s.

The company’s turnover has been declining consistently in recent years, partly because of competition from modern communication methods. CNPR has been hit hard as a result of electronic mail, electronic money transfer and the growing number of privately run fast courier services.

Its inability to keep pace with the latest market trends caused the company to report annual losses in recent years of between €30 million and €50 million. By the end of 2011, the company was saddled with a total debt of more than €105 million, forcing it to cut its workforce by more than 2,500.

Given this negative trend, and as CNPR is a public company, the Government of Romania decided to step in. In February 2012, it signed a Technical Memorandum of Understanding and a Letter of Intent (514Kb, PDF) with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In the document the government undertook to:

• increase the company’s share capital by 20%;
• find a strategic investor for its privatisation;
• appoint a private management company which, in conjunction with the new shareholder, would involve itself in the privatisation of the company;
• reduce, in the initial phase, and prior to privatisation, the number of workers by at least 600, and the number of post offices by 135.

Company’s plan of action

At the end of July 2012, the government released the Strategy for the Privatisation of the CNPR and its two key provisions are that the privatisation process will consist of a 20% capital increase, and the sale of 20% of its shares to a private investor. Ministers approved the strategy document.

The company’s management drew up a plan of action to:

• restructure the post office network in the rural areas, cutting the working time and pay of its 10,000 rural workers by 50%;
• make 2,000 employees in urban post offices redundant;
• stop employees claiming salary increases every three years as a result of scheduled promotion;
• abolish length of service loyalty bonuses;
• stop bonuses for employees who hold more than one position in the company;
• reduce the holiday premium by 50%.

Trade union leaders claimed the company’s management intended to enforce collective redundancy on 6,400 employees (approximately 20% of current workforce) should they refuse to accept the measures.

Trade union reaction

On 6 August 2012, the CNPR’s management informed workers’ representatives of the restructuring plan. In response, the Trade Union of Postal Workers of Romania (SLPR) announced its decision to protest.

The SLPR, which claims to represent about 25,000 of CNPR’s approximately 33,000 employees, said there would be a demonstration outside the company’s head office in Bucharest, and in the provinces the offices of the county’s prefectures would be picketed.

The SLPR said the protests were over:

• their concern for current working conditions, and for the stability of their jobs;
• the violation of the provisions of the collective agreement signed for the period 2008–2018, under which the company and the union undertook ‘not to propose and not to endorse any draft legislation that, if adopted, might undermine the workers’ rights’;
• the management’s failure to provide the necessary quantities of consumables and printed forms, as stipulated in the collective agreement, and which employees often have to purchase at their own expense;
• the three-year delay in the restructuring and reorganisation of the company which had generated instability and the loss of market segments;
• the company’s failure to pay overtime;
• failure to pay annual leave for 2011;
• non-payment of allowances for employees who hold more than one job in the company;
• the company’s failure to secure normal working conditions in the post offices outside Bucharest.

One of the trade union’s arguments is that 699 employees received their Easter bonus for 2011 only after having taken action in court against the company.

The leadership of the SLPR said that, with effect from 10 August 2012, members would be urged to take part in a protest rally in front of the CNPR main offices in Bucharest. They would also be encouraged to join picket lines until 27 August 2012 in several counties of Romania.

If no settlement was made, from mid-September protest action would be stepped up, and could including employees stopping work at post offices.

Commentary

The timetable of action, agreed with the support of the Post and Communications Trade Union Federation (FSPC) and of the National Trade Union Bloc (BNS), went ahead as planned. There were protests by post office workers in all the eight administrative seats of the development regions of Romania, and in other counties, between 10 and 27 August 2012.

The protesters, between 100 and 200 people in each county capital, added their complaints to the mainstream demands common to all postal workers. In some localities, claims centred on poor working conditions and the increase of the standard workload for which overtime had not been paid.

The company’s management and the national authorities offered no formal reaction during the protests.

On 28 August 2012, the minister delegate for social dialogue stated that the government had made no final decision about salary cuts or collective dismissals at CNPR. Ion Smeeianu, Director-General of the CNPR, announced on the company’s website that the management had no intention of starting collective redundancies or cutting salaries in the current financial year.

But with the privatisation of the CNPR in progress, collective redundancies in the near future seem unavoidable. The missing pieces in the puzzle are the number of collective dismissals planned and what severance pay package might be offered to the employees being made redundant.

Constatin Ciutacu, Institute of National Economy, Romanian Academy