Poczta Polska said that its management board had passed a resolution to carry out a voluntary redundancy program. It added that the number of people that will take part in the scheme, as well as the number that, at a later stage, could be laid off, is yet to be determined.

According to Robert Czyż, the chairman of the Polish Postal Workers trade union, the postal service’s workforce started shrinking last year, with some 5,000 people having left their job already.

Czyż said Poczta Polska now plans to lay off an additional 8,500.

He said the postal service started 2024 with a workforce of 63,000, meaning that layoffs would affect more than 20% of its employees.

“This is an unprecedented scale,” Czyż said. He added that the job cuts will affect all groups of employees, not just administrative staff.

He said his trade union considers the scale of the layoffs as “certainly too large.”

Poczta Polska said its voluntary redundancy program includes a severence package and is “the largest shielding program in the company’s history.”