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UNI and the UPU signed a partnership deal on Friday at the UPU World Congress being held in Geneva. The Memorandum of Understanding, signed by UNI Global Union General Secretary, Philip Jennings and UPU Secretary General Edouard Dayan, details how UNI Global Union and the UPU will cooperate over the next four years on such issues as building social dialogue between the UPU members and UNI's affiliates, ensuring the human factor is taken into account when improving postal services, sustainable development, and social responsibility. It renews an agreement reached four years ago between UNI and the UPU and the partnership deal ensures that UNI Global Union the UPU cooperate together on joint actions to improve the skills for postal workers, ensure that the repercussion on jobs is highlighted with postal development, raise AIDS awareness and to develop a joint action plan to promote the UPU's IFS system which uses the postal network to remit the billions of dollars that migrant workers send back to their families.

The UNI General Secretary, Philip Jennings, on speaking to the UPU World Congress General Debate after the Memorandum signing, told delegates that Workers Rights are an integral part of decent jobs and no postal worker anywhere should be denied basic human rights such as freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining. He said; "Without workers rights and union rights, the decent work agenda cannot be achieved. We are concerned therefore to see that with the increasing liberalisation of the postal network, that some companies have used the call for competition as an excuse to carry out social dumping and wage dumping such as TNT’s refusal to pay the minimum wage in Germany. This is unacceptable to UNI Global Union and we will fight to maintain decent jobs for our members."



Mr Jennings also said that; "one of the “coming challenges” we see is that liberalisation such as is taking place in Europe, has the potential to radically alter the concept of a universal affordable postal service and to put at risk Post as an essential service in our communities. UNI Global Union will continue to fight to keep the Post alive and the services it provides as an integral part of our communities whether they are large urban cities, small towns or rural communities."



On the new operators in the industry, he said that, "UNI Global Union wants to make it clear that we are not opposed to the new operators into the industry, in fact many of their workers are our members and we have been working in partnership with them in the UPU Consultative Committee to make sure that we can deliver quality services. We welcome all players into the postal industry but we respectfully remind you all the Post has a long history of trade unions being in partnership with the industry, respecting workers rights and providing decent working conditions. We cannot accept that new operators force substandard wages and conditions on workers in the name of competition.



As UNI Global Union we have been working to make Global Agreements with the multinational companies in our industries, agreements that ensure workers rights are respected and ensure that workers do have decent work. The memorandum that we have with the UPU and which we are going to renew here today, recognises UNI’s role as a partner in the industry and it’s responsibility to it’s workers. We are looking to sign similar agreements with the global companies operating in this industry, TNT, FedEx, UPS, DHL and others. We have already started discussions for global agreements with some of these companies, and if we haven’t we intend to be knocking on your door very soon. We want a profitable industry providing an affordable quality universal service but where there is no social dumping, no wage dumping and decent work."