Postal and logistics service provider Itella will lay off 495 full-time employees and convert the contracts of an additional 180 full-time employees to fixed-term contracts. “In addition, positions will be reduced through natural attrition, voluntary arrangements and the non-renewals of fixed-term [contracts],” Itella announced on Thursday.
The announcement follows the completion of the consultative negotiations the postal giant launched with its delivery personnel in late January.
Itella argues that the redundancies are necessary due to an increase in the popularity of digital communication and the consequent decline in the demand for mail delivery services. Last year, it points out, the number of letters and magazines delivered in Finland fell by over 100 million from the previous year.
Itella expects the decline to only intensify.
Prior to launching the negotiations, Itella estimated that it may cut as many as 800 personnel. Altogether, the negotiations concerned 8,170 members of Itella's workforce of 26,000 personnel.
The Finnish Post and Logistics Union (PAU) has criticised the personnel cuts, arguing that the measures will leave delivery workers in a virtually impossible situation. PAU believes the cuts will make it impossible for some delivery workers to cope with their workload and thus compromise services on certain delivery routes.
“Before beginning the consultative procedure, Itella had the possibility to resort to soft measures, natural attrition and pension arrangements. […] Instead, the state-owned company has resorted to hard measures and forgotten its social responsibility,” slams Heidi Nieminen, a secretary at PAU.
Itella contrastively is confident that it can continue to provide basic delivery services regardless of the cuts by revising the shifts and routes of its delivery personnel to correspond with mail volumes.
Heidi Lämsä, Juho-Pekka Pekonen – HS
Aleksi Teivainen – HT
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Photo: Markku Ulander / Lehtikuva