In the tough electoral battle of 23-J, a new and unexpected trench has emerged: the Post Office. The exchange of accusations between the PP and PSOE for the management of voting by mail, after a statement by Alberto Nuñez Feijóo in which he insinuated obstacles on the part of the management of the public company, intensified yesterday, the same day that the deadline for request this type of vote.
There were long queues in front of the Post Office, both of people rushing the last few hours to request it and of voters who were going to deposit their ballot before going on vacation. There was a wait of more than 45 minutes on Calle Castellnou, in Barcelona, ??where Eric, 20, said that the ballot, which he requested a week ago, arrived yesterday. He had gone to the office in the morning but there were so many people that he decided to come back in the afternoon… to discover that the queue was the same or longer. Others were not so patient. Alejandro, father of a family, would leave the office saying “I’ll come another day”.
The challenge for Correos is enormous: a record 2.5 million voters –according to union estimates– have asked to vote remotely. It represents 8% of the census. In the last general elections, in 2019, 997,530 petitions were processed; in April of the same year, at Easter, there were 1.3 million.
From the day that Pedro Sánchez announced that he was advancing the elections to July 23, the PP was critical. “He wants the Spanish to choose between the polls or their vacations,” Feijóo said.
All eyes were on the Post Office, which Feijóo himself directed in 2000-2003. The current president is Juan Manuel Serrano, a personal friend of Sánchez and former chief of staff of the PSOE’s federal executive commission.
The popular leader outraged the Socialists on Wednesday by calling on Post Office employees to do their best, “independently of their bosses”, so that no one is left without being able to vote. Feijóo qualified his words yesterday: “Nobody talks about pot-punching,” he said. What he was referring to, he added, is “the complaints from the UGT and CC.OO., who know what they are talking about.”
Sánchez accused Feijóo of trying to “muddy” the campaign, while the spokesperson for the PSOE federal executive commission, Pilar Alegría, described as “undignified” that he “tries to sow doubt” about voting by mail.
One of the most critical voices for the situation at Correos has been that of Regino Martín from CC.OO., president of the works council, who has known Feijóo since his time at the head of the company. The popular leader described Martín as his “only communist friend” at the 2022 PP congress.
The unions have condemned the “lack of planning” of the Post Office, which has caused an overload of work. 20-25% of the workforce is on vacation. There are 9,000-11,000 workers less than 45,000. The company has announced 20,240 reinforcement contracts, a figure that has been increasing in recent days.
The unions are skeptical: “Many workers have signed two chained contracts, so the actual number of employees hired is much lower,” says Fina Muñoz, general secretary of the CGT Correos in Barcelona. She denounces that the extra effort falls on a staff that has supported structural vacancies for years. “I myself work in a delivery unit that is divided into 12 sections, but we are nine postmen. That is to say, there are three sections without a title that the rest of us have to cover as we can. And it is worse in rural areas”.
With her car full of papers and a tired face, the delivery person Ángela Mata affirmed yesterday in the Balmes office in Barcelona that she was not “sufficient”. “They have hired anyone for something as serious as this. I spend all day distributing because those who have hired do not know how to do it ”, she complained.
From UGT they calculate that of the total of 2.5 million petitions, the documentation has already been delivered to 1.5 million voters. There is a million missing that must be received between now and Sunday the 16th, deadline day. They have until July 20 to cast their vote in an office. Post office employees must verify the identity of the voter, which lengthens the process.
This Saturday, exceptionally, 1,966 branches across the country will open and another 276 will do so on Sunday. Distributions are also reinforced. “I am confident that we will achieve it, but it will only be thanks to the extra effort of the Post Office workers, whose professionalism and will to serve the public has been demonstrated,” says Rubén Valdés, head of the UGT postal sector in Catalonia, who regrets that “it is used for political purposes of the Post Office workers, either by Mr. Feijóo or from the Government”.
A postman from the Balearic Islands details that the “big problem” of the current campaign is that the postal recruitment bags are empty. The regulations, hardened a couple of years ago “due to union pressure”, eliminate from that remnant any possible worker who resigns from a post at the Post Office if he does not prove that he is hired at another company. Until then, the justification was more lax. “It is evident that on my island you will not find practically anyone in the middle of the tourist season.” His office is under 70% staffed, taking into account leaves, vacations and reinforcements.
This Post Office employee estimates that “the vote-by-mail campaign will go ahead”, among other things because each management of a vote by mail is rewarded with 0.02 euros (the delivery of electoral propaganda, with 0.065). The problem, he adds, is “what we are postponing: administrative and judicial notifications, fines… documentation that in many cases have penalized deadlines.”
