Enlarge image
Post employees on warning strike in Rostock: A labor dispute is pending
Photo: Jens Büttner / dpa
Deutsche Post and the Ver.di trade union have still not been able to come to an agreement in their collective bargaining dispute.
The third round of negotiations that started on Wednesday failed, as the union and the group announced.
Ver.di announced a ballot among its members employed by the post office about a labor dispute.
This threatens the company and its customers with a regular strike, after the union had called warning strikes several times, which meant that millions of letters and packages were temporarily undelivered.
Referring to the high inflation, Ver.di is demanding 15 percent more wages for the group's around 160,000 employees for a period of one year.
According to the union, training allowances should increase by 200 euros a month.
According to the union, almost a hundred thousand employees had taken part in the massive warning strikes that had been going on since mid-January.
At the current talks in Düsseldorf, the Bonn-based group said it had put a package on the table that would have meant wage increases of up to 20.3 percent - albeit over a period of two years.
"Verdi has gambled away a historic opportunity to secure the future of Deutsche Post in Germany," said Post Human Resources Director Thomas Ogilvie.
"The offer presented by the employers is far from our demands," said the deputy Ver.di chairwoman Andrea Kocsis.
She pointed to the low salaries of most Post employees.
Almost 90 percent of the employees are in pay groups in which the basic monthly salary is between 2109 and 3090 euros.
They are particularly affected by inflation, since the last tariff increase in January 2022 was only two percent.
fdi/dpa
