Deutsche Post and the trade union Verdi have not been able to make any progress in the first round of their collective bargaining negotiations.

There was still no agreement, Verdi announced after the talks on Wednesday. The negotiations would now be continued, said a Post spokesperson.

The Verdi union is demanding a seven percent pay rise for the approximately 170,000 employees of the DHL subsidiary. In addition, the union wants to implement three more vacation days in response to the increasing workload of employees. Verdi members are to receive an additional day of vacation. "Due to the increasing volume and weight of parcels, our members need further relief in the form of additional free time," said Verdi negotiator Andrea Kocsis. "Only with significant wage increases for employees can the still high costs and food prices be managed," she added. The term of a new collective agreement should be twelve months.

The Post had dismissed the demands as unrealistic. However, the company was "entering the negotiations constructively and with a focus on solutions," a spokesperson said. The last time the Post and Verdi agreed on a complex collective bargaining package was in spring 2023, after massive warning strikes by the union. According to the company, the package brought an average increase of 11.5 percent in wages and salaries. As a result, the postal service had complained about excessive costs in the German letter and parcel business, which it could not offset by increasing postage rates.

(Report by Matthias Inverardi, edited by Ralf Banser. If you have any questions, please contact our editorial team at berlin.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for politics and the economy) or frankfurt.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for companies and markets).)