News

Global unions ITF and UNI Global Union recently discovered that in India, DHL have begun to carry out a campaign of retaliation and intimidation against union activists. Worker who stand up to management are sent to worksites hundreds of kilometres away separating them from their families and creating unnecessary and unfair financial burdens. These measures are clearly efforts to intimidate workers and to weaken the union.

Management’s intentions in India were made clear in a recording of a meeting (which you can hear for yourself here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmP_M6SfVOA)  last December where a supervisor told workers that if union activity continued, they would be disciplined. Disciplinary measures included transfers to distant job sites and other means. The kind of intimidation heard on this recording is a blatant violation of basic human and trade union rights.

These were not empty threats.  On 5-6 September 2014, two couriers and active union supporters reported they received instructions to transfer to sites hundreds of kilometres from their home base in Delhi.  

When one of the couriers spoke up for his fellow workers in a pay dispute, management warned there would be repercussions. However, the worker refused to be intimidated and continued to speak out against unfair practices prior to his transfer.  The other, a 19-year DHL employee says he has been persecuted by the company for speaking up for his rights and that "since joining the union “intimidation and pestering have increased, they kept changing my shifts between day and night according to their whims… then suddenly out of the blue was told to report to a site far from my home on just a few days notice.”

We have contacted top management at DHL to insist they suspend the transfers immediately and initiate an investigation into these violations to ensure both DHL’s own Code of Conduct and the OECD ‘Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises’ on trade union rights are respected.

As we have reported, we were hopeful that bringing these ongoing issues to light in the OECD process might result in an end to unfair company retaliation against union supporters. But in spite of repeated assurances from DHL, we have seen little progress on the ground.

Our DHL Global Network has been a critical source of support and encouragement for the struggles of DHL workers in India.  We ask that you remain alert and ready to take action at this very crucial time for our Indian brothers and sisters.

Our DHL Global Network meeting is scheduled for 15-17 November in Mumbai.  It’s more important than ever that we meet and discuss how to address DHL’s attacks on the right of workers.  We have a full schedule which we will send out soon, but this will be a top priority.

For more background on the situation in India and the support from ITF affiliates, see the following DHL blog entries:

http://www.itfglobal.org/dhlblog/?p=1705

http://www.itfglobal.org/dhlblog/?p=1680

http://www.itfglobal.org/dhlblog/?p=1658