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Speaking to the American Postal Workers Union Convention, being held in Las Vegas this week, Neil Anderson, Head of UNI Post & Logistics Global Union, told the delegates that the rest of the world was waiting, hoping and praying that the American people would get out to vote in November and elect Barack Obama as President. He said that the world needed a new economic order and that the failed policies of George W Bush had pushed the world's economies towards recession. Without a change in strategy the poor economic conditions in the USA would continue which would reflect on workers wages and conditions around the globe. He said that all UNI Global Union's affiliates around the world must fight the liberalisation, privatisation and outsourcing of jobs to keep decent standards of living for postal workers. One way they must do that was to get out and organize the new operators and express mail businesses that were now a normal part of the postal industry.



Bill Burrus, APWU President in his address to the convention, told delegates they couldn't rest but had to work to promote a universal postal service with 6 day delivery and decent working conditions to maintain a low cost quality letter mail service. He said that the US postal service was being pushed to cut costs and was trying to do that in all sorts of ways such as outsourcing and contracting work normally undertaken by union members. He said that the union cannot allow the situation of market liberalization that has occurred in other countries to pervade the postal service in the United States.



Bill Young from the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), another of UNI's US postal affiliates, also addressed the congress and told delegates they must fight for change and fight for workers rights, that too many workers in the United States were being denied the right to join a union. Later Bill Burrus told delegates this address marked an historic occasion and that they had to seriously consider working closer with the letter carriers and even start debate about whether they should consider merging with them.