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UNI Head of Post & Logistics, Neil Anderson, speaking at the UPU Postal Regulation Forum, said, liberalisation has only meant job losses, worse service for customers and has not brought the innovation and new jobs that were promised by the neo liberal thinkers who have been pushing these changes. He said speakers at this forum are now saying that a reserved area guaranteeing a affordable quality postal service is a model that should be replaced by government subsidies to maintain the USO. “This is the ramblings of discredited free market advocates. It is plain that we need proper regulation in these markets. UNI is calling on the postal industry to “regulate deregulation”.



Several speakers talked of the need to think about the range of services provided by a universal service, including the EU Commission representative, Mr Kaljinski who said that people should now consider a 3 day delivery perhaps as a universal service and also that different prices maybe should be considered for sending mail to the more expensive areas. In response UNI said that postal communications was a two way business and it didn’t matter where you posted a letter you should be able to be guaranteed a universal price regardless of posting point or destination. “This model has worked for more than 100 years and is still producing profits and quality affordable service, why break a working model?”



He also said, “Postal workers are not high paid workers and here are companies saying we can only compete if we are to slash wages and working conditions! In a time of recession these seems a crazy thing to do. We need to have proper social regulation and proper consideration of common social conditions for postal workers or we are just engaging in a race to the bottom delivering rotten service for customers.”



The UNI presentation and the presentations of all the speakers can be found on the UPU web page at;

ftp://fornax.upu.int/Forum%20Postal%20Regulation/