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Jesse Jackson joins APWU to demand keep 6 day delivery

Published: 24 August 2010
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 Jesse Jackson joined APWU President Bill Burrus, Exec Vice President Cliff Guffy and UNI Global Union on a march in Detroit to protest the US Postal Service plans to cut from 6 to 5 day delivery. The APWU are holding their Biennial Convention in Detroit and the more than 2000 delegates left the convention hall to march through the streets of Detroit headed by Jesse Jackson and President Burrus. In the march were 30 international trade union leaders along with Head of UNI Post & Logistics Neil Anderson who were showing their support for the US workers struggle to stop the cuts to 5 day delivery. The convention had heard from Jesse Jackson that he was proudly joining the march and supporting postal workers as he had a personal connection to them with his father having been a postal worker. Reverend Jackson told the rally that America needs jobs and with postal workers providing a vital service to the community, the decision by the US Postal Service to propose cuts from 6 days to 5 days were not only wrong but were immoral in a depression.



He said that the US Government needed to be creating jobs and not considering plans to cut public services. APWU President Bill Burrus told the rally that postal workers were the backbone of all communities and their place delivering a necessary service to Americans should be recognised and enhanced and not cut back. He said the APWU had fought over many years to gain decent wages and conditions for postal workers and for them in return to deliver a trusted and vital service to the community and that the union had no intention of going back down the roads they had already travelled to where now they were able to deliver a quality service and that they had quality jobs.



Speaking at the opening of the APWU Convention, Neil Anderson, Head of UNI Post & Logistics, told delegates that the nearly 20 international trade union leaders, guests at the convention, would be showing their solidarity and disgust at the proposal by the US Postal Service and would be proudly marching in the rally with APWU members. He also told delegates that UNI would continue to fight the liberalisation of the postal market that was seriously damaging the universal postal service that citizens of the world had built over many years and which was now taken for granted. He also said UNI would continue to fight to organise the Global delivery companies that were now part of the industry and which had a very poor record of not respecting workers rights or paying decent wages and conditions.



At the convention several of the international trade union leaders, including UNI europa Post & Logistics Vice President Ingeborg Saetre from Norway, CWU UK General Secretary Billy Hayes, President of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, Denis Lemelin, Pepe Sayagues from UGT Spain and Ramon Baldassini from Argentina, gave delegates an insight into the issues facing postal workers globally and the fights their unions were having to stop postal market liberalisation, privatisation and cuts in service such as 5 day delivery proposals.