OGBL denounces the end of public status at POST Luxembourg

The General Director of POST Luxembourg, Claude Strasser, presented OGBL representatives on March 4, 2024 with a mediation agreement signed between POST Luxembourg and the Syndicat des P&T, the CGFP’s trade union branch within POST Luxembourg.

The agreement, already signed on December 22, 2023, settles the situation of some 270 employees recruited before April 1, 2016, mainly in the middle careers, whose status on hiring was not clearly defined. With this agreement, these employees will have the possibility of changing from a private status to that of state employee.

They will be subject to a career examination and to state employee regulations. However, changing status will not necessarily mean career improvements, and the number of employees wishing to change status will be limited to a minority!

This agreement definitively fixes the private status of all current and non-eligible employees, i.e. around 97% of the workforce. This agreement also fixes the private status of all future POST Luxembourg employees, with a few exceptions agreed between the parties. Thus, for example, it remains possible for civil servants or government employees to transfer to POST Luxembourg.

The end of public postmen

POST and CGFP have also agreed to recruit future postmen and -women exclusively under private status.

The Syndicat des P&T sacrifices public status to save its seats on the board of directors

Postal law stipulates that the 6 staff representatives on the Board of Directors are determined democratically on the basis of the ratio between private and public status within the workforce as a whole. For the first time, the ratio between statuses has shifted in favor of employees, who are allocated 4 seats compared with 2 for public-sector staff.

In their February 2024 newsletter the Syndicat des P&T wrote to POST staff:

“In the said mediation agreement, the Director General is also committed to changing the law within the Board of Directors: introduction of a list, with agents under public law status and employees! Without this decision, the Syndicat des P&T would not have been able to sign the said agreement.”

This mediation agreement establishes a permanent and irreversible imbalance between staff employed under public and private status, and the Syndicat des P&T sees its seats on the board of directors directly threatened. This is why the signatories have expressed the wish to change the method of electing staff representatives to the POST Luxembourg board of directors.

This means that the Syndicat des P&T has sacrificed public status at POST Luxembourg to save its seats on the board of directors.

Syndicat des P&T is misleading POST management and employees

At the time of signing, the signatory parties had committed themselves not to publish the said agreement before March 12, 2024, the date of the social elections.

The Syndicat des P&T broke the trust of POST Luxembourg by publicly announcing the signing of the agreement in February, in the middle of the election period. Even more scandalous is the fact that the Syndicat des P&T used the agreement as election propaganda, and moreover sold the agreement as its opposite, namely the guarantee of public status for all POST Luxembourg employees!

• This agreement commits only the Syndicat des P&T.
• The OGBL will continue to defend and demand a strengthening of POST Luxembourg’s public status!

Press release by the OGBL / Landesverband Public Service Syndicate
March 8, 2024