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09. 02. 10. - 16:00

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09. 02. 10. - 16:00

Post to pay employees huge bonus for police work

The Austrian postal service (Post) is to pay its employees a bonus of 10,000 Euros to transfer to police work, according to today’s (Tues) edition of the newspaper Salzburger Nachrichten.

It said employees who applied to transfer to the Interior Ministry to do administrative police work before 5 March and who were accepted by the ministry by 26 April would qualify for the bonus.

Such employees would receive 2,000 Euros if they had begun training as administrative workers for the police by 3 May and the remaining 8,000 Euros after they had been given permanent employment by the ministry, according to Salzburg postal employees’ union (FCG) official Kurt Friedl.

Post also announced it would pay such employees until 30 June 2014, longer than originally planned.

The news angered Friedl, who said: "If the police benefit from the work of these people, they should be paid by the Interior Ministry."

Post spokesman Michael Homola defended the bonus as an additional incentive for redundant Post employees to transfer to the Interior Ministry.

Noting that only 57 employees had transferred, he said Post hoped 1,000 of them would do so by 2014.

People’s Party (ÖVP) Interior Minister Maria Fekter had claimed last year that 1,000 Post employees would be doing police administrative work by the end of 2010 to free up police to fight crime on the streets.

But an interior ministry spokesman announced last month that around half of the workers who had volunteered for such transfers had proven unsuitable for their new work.

Post and Telekom Austria (TA) employees who want to transfer to the Interior Ministry for police work must pass written exams at the end of their training and then work on probation for two months before being hired permanently.

State agencies Post and TA reportedly have hundreds of non-essential employees who have been sent for courses to the "Career and Development Centre" (KEC).

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