The Yrkestrafikkforbundet (YTF), which represents postal workers in Norway, warns:
“We fear that up to 2,000 mail carriers could lose their jobs if the government’s postal cuts are implemented.”
This would represent a huge further gutting of Norway’s postal service.
The process did not begin today. Six years ago, in 2020, Erna Solberg’s Conservative-led government introduced major changes to postal services. The workforce was reduced, deliveries were cut back and the door was opened further to private postal companies.
Post offices were closed, with many postal services transferred to supermarkets. Large numbers of jobs were lost, many of them held by women, although much of the reduction took place through voluntary redundancy and early retirement.
At the same time, ordinary people saw their postal service deteriorate, with deliveries reduced to five times over a two-week period. This also contributed to an erosion of Posten’s traditional market. Newspapers increasingly moved away from postal delivery and private operators expanded their role.
There was unfortunately little organised resistance from the trade-union movement or the left to these attacks.
The growth of private postal companies also raises serious questions about workers’ pay, conditions and trade-union organisation. When I have spoken to workers delivering for private companies, I have found some are not union members. There is a danger of secure, unionised postal employment being replaced by increasingly precarious forms of work.
Now the parcel side is also under pressure. Management is demanding further savings in response to competition in the parcel market, potentially threatening hundreds more jobs.
The cuts must be stopped
The latest proposed cuts continue the same failed neoliberal approach. Rather than rebuilding a strong public postal service, the Labour-led government is proposing measures that could destroy up to 2,000 postal jobs while private operators continue to expand.
The trade unions must take a stand. The Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO) should bring together postal workers and the wider trade-union movement in a national campaign against the cuts. This should include regular demonstrations in the major cities, involving local unions and trade-union councils.
Such a movement should put maximum pressure on the Labour-led government to change course.
We demand:
- No to 2,000 postal job losses. Defend every job.
- No further cuts to Norway’s public postal service.
- Reverse the postal cuts introduced under Erna Solberg’s government.
- Bring privatised postal services back into public ownership, with decent, unionised jobs.
- For a publicly owned postal service under democratic workers’ and community control.
- No cuts to hospitals, care homes, schools or social benefits.
- Full support for workers and trade unions fighting union-busting employers.
- For public ownership of the key sectors of the economy, under democratic workers’ management and control.
The postal service is a public service, not simply another market from which private companies should be allowed to extract profits. Postal workers and the wider labour movement have the potential power to stop these cuts and fight instead for a properly funded, democratically controlled postal service that serves workers and communities.