Czech Post To Lay Off 1,500 Employees

Czech Postal Service Ceska Posta worker transporting mail

The Czech Post plans to eliminate 2,371 jobs by 1 March next year, which means the dismissal of about 1,500 employees, as some of the positions are vacant.

The state-owned company employs almost 29,000 people. The Minister of the Interior, Jan Hamáček, stated on Twitter that he wants an explanation of the plan. On Thursday, he will also meet with trade union general director Roman Knap and trade union representatives.

According to the Echo24, most redundancies would be in Prague. They will be employees of post counters and postmen and drivers and other employees of postal transport. The post office informed the Labor Office about it and will deliver redundancy notices to workers in December, the website said.

The post office counts on reducing the number of employees in its medium-term strategy. According to that, the company should eliminate 7,000 jobs by 2025. “We want to replace the disturbed places with modern technologies and an overall streamlining of operation,” said Vitík. According to him, in connection with these steps, new jobs will be created, for which part of the redundant workers will be able to retrain.

“Outgoing employees will receive higher severance pay beyond the scope of the Labor Code depending on the number of years worked at the Czech Post. We are also discussing retraining and support for outgoing postmen and the social program of employees in pre-retirement age,” added Budweiserová.

Hamacek said he would ask for an explanation. “In the current covid situation, the need for mail has become apparent. That is why I invited the CEO, the head of the supervisory board and a union representative on Thursday,” he wrote on Twitter.

Czech Post operates 3,200 own or partner branches. Last year, it reported a loss of 363 million crowns. By 2021, the company wants to return to a profit in tens of millions of CZK and increase sales by a tenth of the current CZK 18.8 billion.