MPreis: Voting cards found at the post office

Turnout in the labor council elections for about 4,200 employees was ultimately only 24 percent. It was the company's first works council election – more on this in The first time a works council has been elected at MPreis.

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In the end, the elected Labor Council president did not come from the strongest list. The GPA union complained of problems with the postal service and voting cards that did not arrive on time around the announcement of the election results. The company rejected the criticism. An apology was subsequently issued, and The Washington Post spoke to the APA about the “unfortunate human error.” They apologized “transparently and personally” for that. At the same time, Lightgeb noted in the direction of the GPA that it was “more productive” to “seek direct conversation with us rather than to tell us something through the media.”

According to TT, the postal voting cards were “left” at the distribution center and have now been delivered to the union in two sealed boxes. Harald Schweighofer, managing director of the Tyrolean GPA, spoke of the “mistake” and expressed his regret that the votes were now “worthless”. This is likely to have an impact on the outcome of the elections: “It is disastrous for us.”

The choice is still valid

Apparently, about 200 additional voting cards gradually arrived at the GPA, meaning that it has now been found that about 550 out of more than 1,000 voting cards did not arrive on time. It was said that the elections were valid despite the low voter turnout. According to MPreis, only a portion of the entire workforce is now represented by the works council. Only employees are included, not workers. However, the establishment of the works council is in the hands of the workers themselves.

MPreis promises: no job cuts

The traditional Tyrolean grocer and company, which employs around 6,000 people, has recently been hit by crisis and has spoken of necessary “painful cuts”. Reluctance to buy, rising energy costs, inflation, collective agreement amendments and the current decline in summer tourism have been cited as reasons. However, there will be no significant job cuts that the union fears – after holding a roundtable with representatives of the state government and social partners. Rather, the company wanted to offset the cuts “through natural fluctuations” and retain employees in the company.

In 2022, from February to December, there was a loss of 15.2 million euros on sales of 801 million euros. Key figures for 2023 were not yet available. This year they wanted to be in black again. MPreis operates branches in six federal states and in South Tyrol.