The postal workers strike began at dawn on Monday (12) and is strong. The national stoppage for an indefinite period is against the attack on the health plan of the category and the government’s attempt to privatize the company.

“The Post and the government are causing a real dismantling of the state, attacking workers’ rights, such as health care, and provoking a privatization that can be completed if the category does not act quickly.” This is the alert made by the worker of the Postal and director of the NES (National Executive Secretariat) of CSP-Conlutas, Geraldo Rodrigues, Geraldinho.

Last year the category held a national strike in defense of the health plan. For at least two years the company has tried to pass on the cost of this right to workers under the argument that it is spending almost R $ 2 billion on the benefit and can not afford it.

“Postal Health’s plan, called Postal Health, was created in 2014 under protest from workers who already understood that this situation would occur because a subsidiary would take care of the plan, no longer the company,” recalls Geraldinho.

Before the company had a cost of $ 800 million a year with the plan, when it was operated by the Postal. With the creation of the Postal Health subsidiary, costs have increased and the company wants to transfer this cost increase to the category.

“Workers already pay when they use the service. According to the Collective Agreement, depending on the salary the discount is 5%, 10% or 15% of what you spent using the service, “said Geraldo. Today the company wants the workers to pay 25% monthly and the worst is that the table will be on the gross salary. The measure is a brutal assault on workers who receive low wages and would see their paycheck increase even more.

Last year the category accepted to close the agreement with a readjustment of 2.7%, exactly because the TST (Higher Labor Court) proposed to reissue the collective agreement, which guaranteed in its clause 28 non-payment of the monthly health plan.

Now the company wants to change the clause so that it can implement the monthly charge. “Another serious problem is that the parents of the post office employees who are now dependent will be excluded from the coverage of the plan, which was guaranteed until now,” says Geraldo.

Ongoing Privatization

The internal workers OTT (Operator of Triage and Transborno) total about 17 thousand employees, who will have the positions extinct and, according to the company, would be transferred to the position of postman. This means that the worker has tendered for one function and will exercise another. “It’s a very big attack. What the company wants is to intensify the outsourcing in these sectors, to pay down salaries. There are workers who receive R $ 700 with discounts “, emphasizes the leader.

There are not many attacks that workers in the Post have been suffering.

The company created another subsidiary, CorreiosPar, which would take care of large complexes, which will worsen the provision of services to customers. The creation of this subsidiary is also part of the offensive for privatization, since the objective is to pass on to the private sector the most profitable services and leave the state increasingly scrapped. Who loses is the population, mainly poorer and that lives in the peripheries.

There is also the project of reduction of salary with reduction of the day and the end of the public contest.

“CSP-Conlutas fully supports the strike and will be side by side with the comrades and colleagues of the Postals in defense of the maintenance of its health plan, other rights and against privatization,” reinforced construction worker Atnágoras Lopes, a member of the NES of Central.