News

Deutsche Post plans to hand over about 700 smaller post offices out of the 850 outlets that it operates itself to partner businesses. It has said that businesses such as supermarkets, bakeries and newsagents would take over the small agencies by 2011, with at least 3,000 jobs lost at Deutsche Post.



It is hard to know how he can figure this out, but Juergen Gerdes, board member for Mail, Parcel Germany and the post office network, tried to convince himself by saying: “ The post office network is growing, not shrinking. Service will be better, not worse (so how does he know this?). Our offers are increasing, not decreasing.”



Deutsche Post extended its network of well over 12,000 outlets last year with 600 Postpoints, and would add more of these shop-in-shop outlets, Gerdes said. At the same time, the conversion of Deutsche Post-run post offices into partner outlets enabled the company to reduce costs and extend opening hours, he emphasised.



Yeah sure Juergen! What he failed to tell the news media though was that this meant the people working in these outlets would most likely be out of the collective contract coverage and so the franchising company could pay them less for working longer hours!