Justice in Belgium suspects PostNL once again of collaborating with subcontractors who are guilty of social fraud. The public prosecutor Gianni Reale confirms this to the Flemish business newspaper De Tijd on Friday. A recent check in a PostNL sorting centre in Belgium showed that roughly half of the subcontractors hired by the company to deliver parcels did not comply with the law. This would include undeclared work and violations of the coronavirus measures.
“If, during subsequent checks at GLS and PostNL, infringements are found concerning undeclared work and the coronavirus rules, my office is considering having the depots sealed, which is almost equivalent to a closure”, Reale said to the time. On the basis of the new violations, fourteen subpoenas have been issued against PostNL.
At the beginning of May, PostNL was also in dispute in Belgium because according to the Justice Department, parcel delivery workers have to work under poor conditions and get underpaid. Nevertheless, the company continues to operate in the same way, according to Reale. The prosecution has filed 14 additional charges against the parcel company. PostNL has seven sorting centres in Belgium. One of these is a location in Mechelen, where about twenty thousand parcels are sent every day.
Parcel delivery company GLS is also being prosecuted in Belgium for suspicions of structural social fraud among parcel delivery companies. In a sorting centre of the company in Puurs, 76 parcel delivery companies and 26 subcontractors were checked this week. Almost half of the subcontractors (12) were found guilty of infringements, such as undeclared work and violations of the unemployment rules. Neither GLS nor PostNL responded to the new charges by Friday.
In the Netherlands, PostNL has also been frequently discredited in recent times. For example, subcontractors and deliverers complain that the workload is too high and that they have too little money left. The rates would also decrease every year.
