The mandatory minimum services set by Correos for the 24-hour general strike that began at midnight this Wednesday are aimed above all at ensuring public service functions linked to the general elections of 29 November, with the goal of protecting the fundamental right to vote.
According to the ministerial order on minimum services at Correos signed by the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, these resources are intended to ensure essential tasks such as handling postal voting, delivering census documentation, and distributing electoral propaganda during the full period prior to the election.
In the network of customer service offices, the opening hours remain those of normal operation for processing electoral procedures, with shifts arranged according to the size of each center:
- Offices with up to four employees: one worker 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 people present in each shift must be the director or person in charge of the office.
In rural areas, the points that already normally have customer service will remain open, guaranteeing 100% of service provision in these cases for work related to the electoral process.
In the distribution units, 50% of the workforce is set for the morning shift and another 50% for the afternoon shift in the Unidades de Servicios Especiales, for the delivery of documentation to voters and to the Oficina del Censo Electoral, additionally incorporating in each shift a responsible person in charge of opening, closing, and supervision.
In the Unidades de Distribución y Servicios Rurales, 50% of the delivery staff (with a minimum of one employee) plus a person in charge will work.
For postal and logistical processing, a staff allocation of 25% is established for the morning, afternoon, and night shifts in the Centros de Tratamiento Automatizado (CTA) of Santiago de Compostela, Valladolid, Oviedo, Vitoria, Zaragoza, Barcelona, Mérida, Alicante, Valencia, Palma de Mallorca, Sevilla, Granada, Málaga, Las Palmas and Tenerife, as well as the Centro de Admisión Masiva 1 of Madrid and the Centro de Tratamiento Provincial of Bilbao.
The same percentage of 25% per shift applies to loading and unloading tasks at the centers of Pamplona, Jerez and Murcia; to the management of propaganda at the Integral Logistics Center of Barcelona and at the CTA of Madrid; and to voting by mail at the international centers of Madrid.
MINIMUM SERVICES AT HEADQUARTERS
At Correos’ headquarters, Interior reduces minimum services to staffing levels which, taken together, represent less than 10% of the workforce affected by the strike.
The specific order sets out the essential staff for each area. Thus, the Directorate of Technology and Digital Transformation must have a total of 20 workers (ten for support of electoral systems, three for 24x7 network infrastructure, three for 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 Security Operations Center 24 hours, six in coordination of the office network and incidences of voting by mail, two in the General Registry and one in institutional relations).
The Directorate of Human Resources must maintain six personnel 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 two workers are expected for monitoring voting by mail and relations with the media.
In the Financial Directorate, the minimum services established are three people for critical collections, urgent payments and supervision of the propaganda platform; in the Directorate of Legal Services, two personnel for judicial deadlines and relations with electoral boards; and in the Directorate of Audit and Control, one worker for electoral incidents.
Correos has been responsible for designating, individually, the employees who will cover these mandatory standby duties during the work stoppage period.