Daily insults, sometimes death threats when things don't go as far as beatings, the agents of the Le Havre Post Offices are victims of incivility every week. A situation that they denounced by a widely visible strike this Tuesday, November 12 : 12 of the city's 15 offices were closed. A delegation of postal workers was received at the town hall.
“It’s insults, threats, every weekdescribes Patricia Charneux, teller at the Eure district office for 20 years. We don't even report the majority of incivility.”. Until the one who traumatizes, for her it was a robbery 10 years ago : “he entered with a gun and tear gas canisters”remembers the postal worker, who has since been followed by a psychologist. Patricia also recounts the death threats: “I had to file a complaint against a man, he was sentenced to two years in prison. He was banned from entering the country so that was a relief for a while, but he could come back and we have a sinking feeling in our stomachs”.
Lack of staff
And everyone denounces the drop in the number of Post Office agents at counters, 70 for the 19 offices in the Metropolis including the 15 in Le Havre. “That means offices managed by just one person some afternoons, or even closed every other day”explains Sébastien Morin, South PTT regional delegate.
“Obviously, customers are less well received and they get angry”notes Dominique Leborgne, who has worked at La Poste in Le Havre since 1989 and for 23 years at the Rond-Point office. But the accumulation of incivility becomes unbearable, she explains: “I was arrested several months after an assault this summer. Last year, a customer threw a plexiglass in my face and was going to hit me if witnesses had not intervened.”
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For its part, the regional management of the Post Office explains that “the size of the Le Havre office teams responds to the activity observed and the office attendance”decreasing. To fight against incivility, she claims to have put in place “training for agents, information for customers, multidisciplinary working groups are set up. Finally, La Poste reminds that “agents can file a complaint following serious incivility and La Poste does this systematically.”
