Rush for summer staff causes post service chaos

The annual summer breakdown in the postal service is this year being caused by the lack of staff to replace those on holiday according to the UGT Union. Post deliveries in some parts of the island, in particular ten districts of Palma, is now days behind. The UGT said yesterday that the backlog is being caused because there are not enough staff available to cover for those on holiday during one of the busiest periods of the year. Defending its members, the UGT put the blame in the hands of the post office saying that a decision was apparently taken not to substitute all the members of staff on holiday, on the grounds that the workload drops off during the summer. But it appears that in the end, the post office finally decided to recruit extra staff at the last minute to deal with the summer workload and the union says the situation has developed into “chaos” because of the lack of planning and organisation. “Because the system was not well planned, it has broken down” a spokesperson for the union said yesterday. The post office is having problems in recruiting staff to cover during the holidays. The main problem is that the post office only wants to take people on for short periods of time, but the union says that if longer contracts were offered then people would be more inclined to accept a “stable” job offer.