The 12th UNI Apro Postal Union Forum was successfully held in Taiwan
The 12th UNI Apro East Asia Postal Unions Forum was held in Taipei, Taiwan, on September 28 2014. It attracted approx. 40 participants from Chunghwa Postal Workers Union (CPWU), Japan Postal Group Union (JPGU), and Korea Postal Workers Union (KPWU). This forum focused on “New Services and Innovation,” and “the current situations surrounding postal business in each countries.”
Mr. Chen yi-ming, Vice Minister of Ministry of Labor, Mr. Wang Tin-chun, Section Chief of Telecom and Postal Department of Transportation and Communication Ministry, and Mr. Wanng Chang, President of Chunghwa Post delivered speeches to the floor. They highly appreciate the framework of postal forum not only for sharing current situations and but also for exchanging ideas to solve issues which postal services are facing. Bro. Christopher Un, Regional Secretary of UNI Apro, praised postal forum which has helped to expand similar types of fora in other sectors such as finance, ICTS, and commerce in the sub regional basis in UNI Apro.
Bro. Ito, Director of the UNI Apro Post and Logistics, described crisis of postal universal service. Re-definition of universal service would give huge impacts on postal service industry, postal workers, and communities.
As for the current postal situations, the CPWU reported that Chunghwa Post is developing real estate businesses using postal sites to keep postal universal service. The CPWU is trying to narrow down treatments gap among workers who entered before and after the corporatization of Chunghwa Post. The KPWU explained to successfully get Saturday delivery cut. This will lead to reduction of tremendous overwork hours for workers and better balance between work and family life. It also illustrated about the negative impacts on postal services from the Korea-US FTA. The JPGU presented about IPO of Japan Post in fall next year.
Regarding “New Services and Innovation,” the KPWU talked about the launch of economic mobile service offered by Korea Post. With this service, Korea Post has stepped forward from postal service to telecom. The CPWU described introduction of micro insurance service by Chunghwa Post, establishing of logistics park, and beautification of post office.
Throughout this forum, it was emphasized that each postal union has made hard efforts to keep working conditions and job security. They have understood that changing earning structures should be necessary with innovation of e-service to overcome the world trend of mail volume declining.