Swiss Post could resort to job cuts to plug heavy losses

© Keystone / Michael Buholzer

The Swiss Post must save CHF100 million ($107.5 million) by the end of the year.

These savings must be achieved through efficiency gains, for example in transport and purchasing and in the personnel structure, said director Roberto Cirillo in an interview with newspaper Blick on Friday.

Cirillo said he did not know whether this would mean redundancies. “I can’t say more than that yet,” he added. The company has close to 50,000 employees in over 100 roles.

The Swiss Post is currently in negotiations with the price watchdog to raise the postage rates for both letters and parcels. The earliest the new prices should come into effect is 2024.

Without cost-cutting and raising prices Swiss Post risks reducing its services, warned Cirillo, as it would no longer be able to fulfil its universal service mandate under the Postal Services Act and the Postal Services Ordinance.

“We risk ending up with French conditions! There, the post office has cheap deliveries in the city and expensive deliveries in the countryside, because the costs are much higher. This is what we must avoid,” he said.

Last year Swiss Post achieved a consolidated profit of CHF295 million, a drop of CHF157 million compared with 2021. The economic consequences of the war in Ukraine, the downturn in interest rates and the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic are responsible for this decline, according to the private limited company that is owned by the government.