2,000 posties to lose their jobs as Australia Post restructures to cater for online shopping boom, union claims
- A union has claimed Australia Post will use a delivery restructure to cut jobs
- The restructure allows more posties to focus on delivering an influx of parcels
- Australia Post said posties would not be forced out of a job under the changes
Australia Post will fire at least 2,000 workers under the cover of a restructure of deliveries designed to meet changing shopping demands, a union has claimed.
In April, Australia Post announced a restructure that will see letters delivered every second business day so more posties would be available to deliver parcels from online shoppers.
But Shane Murphy, the President of The Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union, said the company was using the restructure to cut thousands of jobs.
Mr Murphy told The Australian Australia Post managers had explained to staff one of four traditional postie jobs would be scrapped under the restructure.
A union has claimed Australia Post will use a restructure of delivery services to cut up to 2,000 postie jobs
He said a third postie would switch to delivering only parcels while the remaining two would continue to drop off letters but now on every second day.
Australia Post is bound by government legislation that details how it functions but it was granted an exception to restructure its performance standards until June 2021.
The union said it would lobby Senators and Labor to roll back the changes.
‘The government has allowed them to make temporary changes yet Australia Post is looking operationally to make changes that aren’t temporary that, in essence, will remove up to 25 per cent of the posties from the workforce,’ Mr Murphy said.
Mr Murphy estimated between 2,000 and 2,500 jobs would be cut.
Australia Post is bound by government legislation that details how it functions but it was granted an exception to restructure its performance standards until June 2021
Australia Post slammed the claims in a statement on Monday and said posties would not be impacted by the restructure.
‘No postie that is directly impacted by the implementation of the ADM (alternating delivery model) will be forced to accept a redundancy,’ it said.
‘Australia Post also has no plans to cut posties’ take-home pay.
‘These changes have been requested to enable Australia Post to continue to offer important community services and remain sustainable for the future.’
Mr Murphy said statement was further proof jobs cuts were coming.
‘Australia Post has very carefully worded a statement that says that no postie “directly impacted by the implementation of the ADM will be forced to accept redundancy”,’ he said.
‘That doesn’t rule out workers indirectly impacted, such as van drivers and processing workers, being hit with forced redundancy. Nor does it mean there won’t be large scale job losses. In fact, it all but confirms there will be.’
Australia Post slammed the claims in a statement on Monday and said posties would not be forced out of a job due to the restructure
It comes after a strategic review published in 2018 found the company could hit losses of $400million a year by 2021 if savings were not made.
But Australia Post made $41 million profit in 2019, and the company responded in a statement in April that it regularly undertook reviews to help better manage its business practices.