News

The UNI Telecom Vice Presidents met with UNI World president Shoji Morishima and the new Head of the Telecom Department, Marcus Courtney, to discuss the future priorities for the UNI Telecom department. The meeting which took place in Tokyo, Japan, also included Neil Anderson who is handing over the Head of Department's role to Marcus. The Vice President's from each region started by discussing what progress they had made in their region implementing UNI Telecom's action plan, which had been developed in 2007 at UNI Telecom's Athens world conference. They then went on to discussing their priorities for the future.



It was agreed that the future priorities for the sector were grouped under three main themes. The first being the convergence and change that was occurring in the sector within the telecom, IT and media industries and the changes this brought to jobs and work especially considering the changes being made to the regulations affecting the industry. A priority was put on developing policies and structures that aided workers and putting in place lobbying programmes so that regulators, governments and decision makers took workers needs into consideration when making their decisions on these issues.



The second main priority was on developing organising opportunities and workers rights in the multinational companies dominating the ICT industries. Particular emphasis would be put on developing campaigns and networks to ensure the multinationals were respecting workers rights to organise and to help unions in their organising efforts particularly in mobile phone companies.



It was also agreed that the use of non regular workers, temporary agency and despatch workers was increasingly becoming a trend in the telecom industry and UNI Telecom needed to find ways to assist unions to organise these workers. A focus on dealing with these non regular workers would be developed.



Finally it was agreed that the next world Telecom meeting, which is due to be held in Nyon, 30 June 1 July, would focus on these issues and communicating UI's actions and sucesses with affiliates. The June world meeting would be structured around three panel discussions on these themes and affiliates attending that meeting would be invited to contribute to the debate and to develop goals for UNI Telecom and it's new team.

UNI Telecom World President, Shoji Morishima with the regional Vice Presidents, Marcus Courtney, Neil Anderson, UNI staff and NWJ staff