- exo-utils breaks some versions of panel plugins that rely on exo-mount
      (xfce4-volstatus-icon and xfce4-cddrive-plugin, only in ubuntu) 

The above taken from:
http://www.ubuntuupdates.org/packages/show/272503

This is correct except that it should say it applies to Ubuntu and derivatives.

Is something being done to address this problem?

Or is there a workround for it? 

At the moment I have pinned exo-utils so that volstatus cannot be removed but I don't want to leave it that way for ever.

xfce4-volstatus-icon version 0.1.0-0ubuntu5

exo-utils version 0.6.0-1

Linux Mint Debian Edition.