La Poste is closing offices in Haute-Garonne. Two this summer in Toulouse, one in Cintegabelle at the beginning of October. Successive reorganizations and job cuts. We talk about it with Karim Azaroual, CGT departmental secretary of La Poste.
La Poste continues to close post offices. Two offices closed this summer in Toulouseone in the Bonnefoy district, the other district of Sept Deniers. On October 5, that of Cintegabelle, in Muretain, also lowered the curtain definitively. Closures that the regional management of the Post Office justifies by a drop in attendanceaccording to Christian Carles, regional delegate of the La Poste Occitan group, in 10 years, the activity of the Bonnefoy and Sept-Deniers post offices has reduced by 51% and 57% respectively. We talk about it with Karim Azaroual, CGT departmental secretary of La Poste in Haute-Garonne. He has worked for 15 years as a sorting agent in a mail sorting center.
Do these post office closures sadden you?
I don't know if it's a feeling of sadness or annoyance, but all I know is that the population sees the oldest French public service disappearing in their neighborhood. We have semi-privatized the profitable activities of La Poste, with subsidiaries. The government is demanding a savings plan of 50 million euros.
The activity of the Toulouse offices has declined significantly, says the management of La Poste, with a loss of general activity for La Poste of -25%. Is the Post Office adapting to this drop in activity?
Businesses and public services must evolve with society based on the needs of the population. The The problem is that La Poste calculates attendance in terms of operations that generate added value. A person who comes to collect a package does not generate added value, it is not calculated in attendance. We had petitions signed this summer against the closures and the offices were always full.
In Haute-Garonne, at the CGT, you say that La Poste employees went from 5,800 to 5,000 before COVID-19, what is the direct consequence of this drop in numbers?
At the national level, between 2013 and 2023, there were 77,000 jobs lost at La Poste. So there, at the moment, we are talking about Michelin and Auchan with 2000 job cuts. It's a broad social plan at La Poste, even if we don't call it that. These job cuts are made through continuous reorganizations. For ten and fifteen years at the Post Office, mail delivery has been every two or three years. When an office closes, even if it is transformed into a municipal postal agency, we are talking about closure because in a post office we can carry out more than 100 operations, in a postal agency or a relay, we can only carry out about ten.
Magalie calls France Bleu Occitanie, she is very disappointed with the closure of the Toulouse-Bonnefoy post office, she goes to Croix-Daurade where there are only electronic machines and we are not all comfortable, she said. At the CGT de la Poste, in addition to petitions, have you planned actions to denounce the failure of this public service?
We mobilized this summer, through exchanges with the population, we try to alert, to educate, to raise awareness about the disintegration of public services. We put a questionnaire online on the CGT website to try with the population to create ideal post offices. “How do you want them?” This is the title of the questionnaire and the goal is to start from the needs of the population to prepare a platform of proposals that we would share.
