News

Unions from around the Asia Pacific region who have members in the DHL courier express and logistics company, met in Jakarta to discuss how to organise more workers into unions and to get DHL to Respect workers rights. The unions reported that in many countries in the region, workers are afraid to join a union. They are afraid that DHL management will take action against them if they know they are union members.



Many also reported that DHL's aggressive cost cutting programme aimed at stemming their fall in profits with the global recession, has made workers afraid they will be targeted for redundancy if they join unions and demand proper rights and consultation over the cost cutting measures.



Neil Anderson, Head of UNI Post & Logistics Global Union, said at the meeting, that UNI and it's partner Global Union Federation, the ITF, were committed to getting Deutsche Post DHL to respect workers rights and to commit to proper dialogue with workers and their unions. The aim of UNI and the ITF was to get a proper global agreement that gave these rights and was able to be monitored by the unions so that workers did not need to fear for their jobs if they formed unions. He said DHL workers should be able to expect that the company would respect their rights form a union to ensure they have decent wages, conditions and union rights.



At the meeting, Anna Kenny, union organiser from New Zealand said that the workers at DHL Express had recently joined the union and they were concerned that the company was trying to make them accept unpaid days off to stem their losses in profits as the global recession was hitting the company. She said the workers understood the company was not going bankrupt and they were asking workers to take cuts they could not afford. She said workers expected investors to take the pain and not the loyal work force who already were not highly paid.



You can see Anna talk about why the DHL Express workers in New Zealand joined the union