The Ministry of the Interior has issued this Friday in the Official State Gazette (BOE) the order that sets out the mandatory minimum services in Correos during the 24-hour general strike called for 11 November by several trade unions, including CCOO and UGT.
The provision places as a priority the public service functions linked to the general elections of 29 November, with the aim of protecting the exercise of the fundamental right to vote.
The ministerial order, signed by the Interior minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, responds to the stoppages promoted by CCOO and UGT across the public and labor sector, as well as to the call for a full-day strike proposed by CGT for that same date.
Interior bases this regulation on the need to ensure essential tasks such as managing postal voting, delivering the census documentation, and distributing electoral propaganda in the full period prior to the polls.
Offices, delivery, and processing centers
In the customer service office network, the order requires that they open during their usual hours to handle electoral procedures, setting the staff per shift according to the size of the workforce:
- Offices with up to four workers: one employee per shift.
- Offices with between five and eight employees: two per shift.
- Offices with more than eight workers: three per shift.
In all cases, one of the persons assigned to each shift must be the director or officer in charge of the office.
In rural areas, those points that habitually provide assistance to the public will remain open, guaranteeing 100% of the service in these cases for procedures related to the electoral process.
In the distribution units, 50% of the morning-shift workforce and 50% of the afternoon-shift workforce are established in the Special Service Units, which are intended for delivering documentation to voters and to the Electoral Census Office, with the incorporation in each shift of an officer responsible for opening, closing, and supervision.
In the Distribution Units and Rural Services Units, the presence of 50% of the delivery staff (with a minimum of one worker) plus an officer is planned.
For postal and logistical processing, 25% of the plantilla is set for the morning, afternoon and night shifts in the Automated Processing Centers (CTA) of Santiago de Compostela, Valladolid, Oviedo, Vitoria, Zaragoza, Barcelona, Mérida, Alicante, Valencia, Palma de Mallorca, Sevilla, Granada, Málaga, Las Palmas and Tenerife, in addition to Mass Admission Center 1 of Madrid and the Provincial Processing Center of Bilbao.
The same 25% rate per shift is determined for loading and unloading tasks in the centers of Pamplona, Jerez and Murcia; for handling propaganda in the Comprehensive Logistics Center of Barcelona and the CTA of Madrid; and for voting by mail in the international centers of Madrid.
Minimum services at Correos headquarters
At Correos headquarters, Interior reduces the minimum services to allocations which, as a whole, represent less than 10% of the affected plantilla.
The order specifies the essential personnel by area. Thus, the Directorate of Technology and Digital Transformation must have a total of 20 workers (ten for support for electoral systems, three for the 24x7 network infrastructure, three for the workstation, two for cybersecurity and two for reporting and dashboards).
For its part, the Directorate of Operations must have 21 employees at headquarters (ten in transport, five in centers, three in distribution and three in services to the network).
In addition, the General Secretariat and Public Policies must have 15 people (six in security and the 24-hour Security Operations Center, six in coordination of the office network and incidents related to voting by mail, two in the General Registry and one in institutional relations).
The Directorate of Human Resources must maintain six staff for extraordinary hiring for the campaign, prevention and payroll; the Commercial Directorate will have four employees for critical claims, and in the Directorate of Strategy, Sustainability and Brand there will be two workers for monitoring voting by mail and media.
In the Financial Directorate, minimum services are set at three people for critical collections, urgent payments and supervision of the propaganda platform; in the Directorate of Legal Services, two staff for judicial deadlines and relations with electoral boards, and in the Directorate of Audit and Control, one worker for electoral incidents.
The order specifies that it will be Correos who, individually, designates the employees who must cover these mandatory shifts during the strike day.