SNTCT celebrates its 35 years with international seminar
SNTCT, a UNI Post & Logistics Portuguese affiliate, celebrated it's 35th anniversary with an international seminar on postal liberalisation. The seminar was the first part of a days celebration by the union which is currently in a long and hard struggle with Portugal Post (CTT Correios) to bargain a collective contract that is acceptable to the union members.
UNI Post & Logistics participating in the seminar made a presentation on the recently completed research project it has undertaken. The seminar participants both from a number of European countries and also SNTCT's branches was told that UNI's research has shown that liberalisation has not been of long term benefit to either customers or workers. UNI's study, which has shown similar results to a study done on behalf of the European Commission by "PIQUE", shows that while some prices may have fallen and there are new competitors in the market, this has been at the expense of customer satisfaction and workers jobs and conditions of employment which in all cases have been adversely affected. UNI told the participants that they must continue to fight for quality jobs and to provide quality postal services.
Other speakers from , Spain, Croatia, Greece, Norway, and Italy told the seminar of the serious affects that the global financial crisis was having on the postal industry. They all said that liberalising the markets under these conditions was a bad idea and they called for a halt to liberalisation. They also said that there must be efforts to maintain decent jobs and good wages and conditions for postal workers to help stabilise the world's economy.
UNI P&L Head of Department, Neil Anderson speaking in the afternoon at a special session of the union general assembly to celebrate the SNTCT 35 years, said that ordinary people were being affected by the financial crisis and that after 35 years of hard work, SNTCT now had to take that experience and use it to ensure that ordinary postal workers were part of the solutions to the crisis. He wished the union well for the future and said the union has spent 35 good years of work for it's members. The next goal for the union was to add a "zero" to the end of the 35 years and plan to make the union to be strong enough to be celebrating 350 years!