Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil wants to improve the working conditions of parcel carriers: They should no longer carry parcels weighing more than 20 kilograms on their own. "Parcels weighing more than 20 kilograms must then be delivered in the future by carriers with two people," the SPD politician told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper. "This is about the health of people who make our everyday lives easier with their work and keep the country running."
Many parcel delivery people get slipped discs, Heil warned. "That's why I want to enforce that parcels weighing more than 20 kilograms no longer have to be carried by one alone." Such a weight limit had also been demanded by the services union Verdi.
Deutsche Post DHL considers such a legal limit conceivable "if this limit then applies uniformly and is also applied and controlled at competitors," a Post spokesman told Deutsche Presse-Agentur on Sunday. In his group, the share of items weighing more than 20 kilograms is currently 1.7 percent, he said. "We are taking extensive measures, for example providing aids such as the delivery trolley, to minimize the load," the Post spokesman said. This has also been agreed with employee representatives, he added.
For parcels weighing ten kilograms or more, there should be a labeling requirement in the future, Heil also said. "So that the messenger can see right away what he can expect."
The labor minister wants to push this through in the amendment to the Postal Act, which the Federal Ministry of Economics is currently working on. "There, my house will introduce occupational safety measures," Heil explained. He expects Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) to present the draft before the end of the year. The Postal Act was last fundamentally revised in 1999 - at a time when letters were much more important than today and parcels played only a secondary role.
Heil pointed to the large growth of the parcel industry. "From 2017 to 2021, the number rose from 2.6 to 4.5 billion parcels." After all, he said, it's convenient to "buy everything online from your sofa and have it delivered to your front door." His family also orders online, the minister said. "So I benefit from it and I don't want to criticize it at all. But we also have to deal with the question of what happens to the employees who lug a heavy package up to the 5th floor."
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