Cooperation negotiations which were started in Finland on April 15th 2013 have ended. The changes concerned centralized and decentralized Group Functions, Itella Mail Communications and Itella Logistics business groups in Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.
In all countries, the cooperation negotiations and changes affected altogether about 1,500 people working mainly in administrative expert or supervisory positions.
- We are very pleased to achieve the target with smaller number of redundancies than estimated. The number has become smaller by different voluntary arrangements and pension arrangements during these negotiations. The number of redundancies was estimated to be 350 employees at most, out of which at most 290 employees in Finland. After the negotiations the number of redundancies is 183 persons, out of which 147 in Finland, says Jaana Jokinen, Senior Vice President, HR, Itella.
In Finland, Itella Group will offer the employees made redundant a severance package including a compensation proportionate to the duration of the employment, support package for the job market outside Itella, retirement options, and statutory measures concerning transition security. In other countries, Itella will proceed in accordance with local laws and practices.
The cooperation negotiations did not affect daily postal services in Post offices, customer service or production duties, such as sorting and delivery, transportation or service warehouse operations.
Despite earlier rationalization measures, Itella's result is not at the targeted level and the operating environment is going through considerable changes. Printed materials are increasingly substituted by electronic ones thus decreasing Itella's delivery volumes. Competition has intensified and economic growth slowed down. There is a significant need to ensure competitiveness and profitability, due to which Itella has started a performance improvement program for 2013-2014. The target of this new program is to achieve cost savings of EUR 100 million.
10.04.2013 Itella starts cooperation negotiations to improve performance
More information and interview requests
Itella MediaDesk, tel. +358 20 452 3366 (Mon-Fri at 8.30 am - 4.30 pm Finnish time)
Itella Group provides solutions for managing information and product flows. Itella operates in the fields of mail communications, logistics, and financial management in Europe and Russia. Net sales in 2012 amounted to EUR 1,947 million. The number of staff is approximately 27,500. Corporate services are delivered under the Itella brand, while the Posti brand is used for services targeted at consumers in Finland. Further information is available online at www.itella.com.
