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The CWU UK conference being held in Bournemouth, heard an impassioned speech from the President of the Greek postal Workers Union, Georgios Vasilopoulos, about how the austerity measures in Greece are destroying the jobs of Greek workers. He told the conference that collective contracts had been destroyed and wages and conditions reduced without agreement with workers and without negotiations. He said "social dialogue is dead"! Wages for many postal workers had been arbitrarily cut by up to 50% and properly negotiated and agreed conditions of work slashed and taken away without any negotiations.



He said thousands of jobs had been just taken away over night, unemployment was at totally un-sustainable levels of nearly 25% and the non-democratic Government of Greece had made decisions affecting workers without any consultation and not in accordance with the Greek Labour Laws. He said workers were paying the price for the bankers and Government's mistakes and Greece was paying the price for joining the Euro when the economy just was not ready for such a move.



He urged conference to join with Greek workers in opposing austerity measures being imposed in Europe and to demand that any changes affecting workers be properly negotiated and that Governments and the EU Commission stop making workers take on an unfair burden in the economic restructuring taking place in Europe.



Billy Hayes, CWU General Secretary, in his address to conference spoke of the need for workers to join together in opposing arbitrary changes to their properly negotiated collective contracts and to oppose the austerity measures being imposed on workers throughout Europe. He also called on the UK Government to halt their plans top privatise the Post Office and to keep the post public. He said the only way to guarantee a viable universal postal service was to give Royal Mail the freedom to operate as a public service and to keep the Post Office as a community asset.



Billy also urged the delegates to move out of their comfort zones and to reach out to all workers in the communications industry to organise them in membership of the CWU.



He went on further to give details of his vision for the next twelve months and the work plan he saw for the CWU and in his newly elected position of World President of UNI Post & Logistics Global Union.



The Conference has also has taken several important steps to restructure the unions organising activities by putting more emphasis on each sector (Post and Telecom) taking more responsibility for organising the workers in their part of the industry

Billy Hayes with Georgios Vasilopoulos