Deutsche Post: more wages, 8000 jobs less – why that’s okay

Only two days are the wage financial statements between the Verdi union and the post office, since CEO Tobias Meyer announces a large job cuts: 8,000 of 187,000 jobs in postal and parcel delivery in Germany are to disappear. One reason is the “five percent” wages increased by the unions. They show themselves outraged, the wage final equalization just equal to inflation.

But in turn. The DHL Group led by Tobias Meyer is actually doing well. In order to prevent confusion: Since the former authority “Deutsche Bundespost” was privatized 30 years ago, it has been renamed several times. By 2023, “Deutsche Post” was still part of the name and also the common name for the group. In the meantime, the listed company is only called “DHL Group”. The term “Deutsche Post” is only a brand name, your services summarized with the German parcel business of the DHL in the company section “Post & Package Germany”.

And almost everything tells that. Because logistics is a growing business, the DHL Group is very successful internationally. However, the letter market is disappearing by 20 percent in the past three years alone. Therefore, the policy of Swiss Post allowed the postmodernization law last year to take more time to deliver the letters. Since the beginning of the year, 95 percent of the letters only have to arrive at the recipient on the third working day.

Nevertheless, DHL Group boss Meyer criticizes that the Federal Network Agency of Post leaves too little scope for price increases. At the beginning of the year the standard letter became 10 cents more expensive, but Meyer wanted more. As a quasi-monopolist when delivering, the post must have the fee approved. Meyer criticizes that the postage increase does not correspond to inflation.

The Federal Network Agency, of course, contradicts it that it could not determine the cost increases brought up by Swiss Post. In addition, the post and package area achieves 85 percent of its sales with unregulated products. Here the group is free in its pricing, like the Federal Network Agency towards the star executed.

Even if the network agency is on the price brake: it is not the case that the standard letter, among other things, has not already become very expensive. In the past ten years, the postage has now increased from 62 cents to 95 cents. If it were only after the general inflation during this time, then postage should only cost 79 cents today.

That would be the case of the post office of the post office with Verdi. We remember: Last week, 27,000 post and parcel deliverers were on the warning strike. In the end there was an agreement. Two percent more wages for April 1 of this year and another three percent more wages on April 1, 2026. However, this is completely increasing within the framework of the expected inflation, which is currently 2.3 percent.

In addition, Verdi has negotiated more vacation for everyone – two days for more than 16 years at the post office. One day vacation corresponds to a wage increase of 0.4 percent. “With the additional vacation days, the high loads and the disproportionately high sick leave had to be reacted to,” says Deputy Verdi chairwoman Andrea Kocsis. And if the union enforces leisure instead of wages, the bottom line also means that a little more workers are needed.

Either way: the tariff can hardly be brought out as a job killer.

What unions and group management unites: Both complain that they no longer have a fundamental advantage over the competition in sales tax since the latest postal reform. On the other hand, the Monopoly Commission had been demanding for many years not to one -sidedly prefer the post office. Because that was the whole idea from the start to privatize the mail to enable more competition. So that we customers have cheap service providers.

On the side of the former state company, this has been achieved. In the meantime, the DHL Group has around 600,000 employees worldwide, with express deliveries, logistics, freight business and adjacent services worldwide turns sales-and almost six billion operational profits. Business in Germany is only a fifth of sales, but still 821 million euros in surgical profit.

Incidentally, the letter market is most recently the advertising letters that become less. The turnover with letters decreased by eight percent, which is also okay. Because nobody needs it anymore. The parcel market grows, but not to the same extent: DHL was only able to grow by almost five percent in Germany.

But as long as the places that are no longer necessary, as announced, can be dismantled socially, there is actually no problem. The DHL Group explained that the areas want to be reduced “among other things” by “regular fluctuation”, the DHL Group explained star on request. This is actually good news in view of the fact that letters are no longer so important.

Incidentally, the investors were also satisfied with the numbers and the announced international savings program “Fit for Growth” over one billion euros, which also includes the announced job cuts in Germany. The price of the share rose by more than 11 percent by evening.