Postal deliveries disrupted by strikes at sorting offices, including Brussels

The postal sector is facing disruption due to ongoing strikes at Npost distribution centres, including in Liège (Awans), Charleroi (Fleurus) and Brussels (Neder-Over-Heembeek) where blocades have been in place since Tuesday night.

Only two sorting centres are still operating normally, both in Flanders - Ghent and Antwerp.

Postal workers have been protesting for several days against a planned reorganisation of local postal routes.

Bpost emphasised that no jobs will be lost, but admitted there will be a redistribution of postal routes "according to the needs on the ground". Unions feel the reorganisation is going "too far" and "too fast".

Bpost chief executive Chris Peeters said that the aim was more profitability, but workers feel that their job is changing beyond recognition, as parcel delivery increases to the detriment of traditional tasks.

“We no longer have time to talk to people – we have to deliver parcels that can't wait,” one Brussels postal worker explained, adding that the increasing physical demands of the job - delivery workers have just over 60 seconds to deliver each parcel by hand - require a high level of fitness.

Bpost's financial situation has deteriorated since it lost a state contract for newspaper distribution to foreign competitors.

The volume of mail has also steadily declined, reflecting a broader trend taking place in Europe. Even Bpost’s 60% market share in Belgium for business-to-consumer parcel delivery does not compensate for the drop in mail revenues.

A meeting between unions and management on Tuesday went poorly, with the CSC Transcom union describing it as "very brief" and devoid of solutions to end the current strike action.

In the meantime, about 70% of postal rounds were carried out in Wallonia as normal, though a Bpost spokesperson said that even if postal service workers turn up for work, they are sometimes unable to deliver letters and parcels because they haven not reached them as a result of the blockades at distribution centres.

The impact on mail distribution in Brussels remains unclear for now.

Bpost management said it hoped to "get back to the table as soon as possible" to negotiate with the unions, according to a spokesperson.