Besides the planned layoffs, postal workers are also disgruntled they have had to take a 10% pay cut.
A delegation of protesters will meet with Communications Minister Valerian Vreme to present him with their propositions to make the company profitable and threaten to go on full-blown strike unless the postal company’s revenues increase 20% by yearend to allow for wage hikes.
Postal workers demand the company scrap its unilateral decision to force them into two days’ unpaid leave per month, halt its layoff plans and draw up a short and medium term strategy to stabilize the company’s position on the local postal services market.
Employees said the company’s management has been keeping it under a continuous restructuring process for the past two years and the company is registering losses. The union said postal workers are sometimes forced to buy their own office supplies in order to do their jobs because the company doesn’t provide them. People fear for their job safety and say the post office has been under reorganization processes for the past two years and employees’ wages have been lowered by more than 10% recently.
Posta Romana will continue its reorganization with the closing of 450 offices and restructuring of 1,400 jobs, having closed 900 offices earlier this year, bringing its network to 6,100 units, the company said on July 12.
Posta Romana general manager Dan Neagoe said at the time laid off personnel could be redistributed to other company branches, such as the banking or insurance firms it plans to set up. An evaluation will determine whether layoffs are necessary, he added.
The state-owned postal company plans to provide financial-banking services through its offices starting with 2012, by setting up such a company on its own or in partnership with a bank, or as a distributor for financial products and services through its own network and personnel.
The company is currently running a pilot-project selling general insurance policies in 500 offices, a figure which will double by the end of the year.
Posta Romana is Romania’s biggest postal service company and has a network of 7,100 local offices. The company employs 34,200 people, of which over 11,000 are mail carriers. The company is expected to lower its staff numbers to 32,663 by the end of the year.
Posta Romana is 75% owned by the state, through the Ministry of Communications, and 25% owned by investment fund Fondul Proprietatea.