• With the compensation of employees’ unworked hours during the strike, the company intends to normalize the flow of deliveries throughout the country as soon as possible;
• In assemblies organized by their unions, the state-owned company’s workers decided to return to work.

Most Correios‘ postal workers who had joined the national strike in Brazil returned to work on Tuesday, according to the state-owned company responsible for the Postal Service in the country, which accounted that 92.7% of its employees are working normally.

On Monday (21), the Superior Labor Court (TST, in Portuguese) determined that the employees should return to work, under penalty of a daily fine of BRL 100,000 to the representative entities, in case of non-compliance.

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Correios reported, in a statement, that with the compensation for unworked hours (a measure also determined by the TST, the company intends to expand the operational capacity and normalize the flow of deliveries across the country as quickly as possible. “Delivery efforts will continue to be carried out with the support of employees from the administrative and operational areas, united in favor of maintaining the services of the state-owned company,” it said.

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According to Correios, the service network remains open and delivery services remain available. The scheduled posting service, however, remains temporarily suspended, a measure that has been in effect since the announcement of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Between Monday and Tuesday, the two federations representing the state-owned company’s workers – Findect and Fentect – in the country organized, through their unions, assemblies to discuss the TST decision.

“To continue the strike would be a confrontation with the Justice decision. In the current political situation of attacks on workers, the result of this could be catastrophic for the category and the existence of unions, and the reorganization for the next fights could be impossible”, it stated Findect on its website.

Fentect, which represents another part of the postal workers, said that the entity’s board, together with representatives of the affiliated unions, advised the workers to resume their activities starting this Tuesday night. Fentect also said that “it will appeal the judicial decision in all possible instances”.