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Postal Industry must deal with the Financial Crisis



A special session of the UPU Postal Operations Council, discussed how the industry could deal with the financial crisis and the special affects it was having on the global delivery industry. The forum held at the UPU’s headquarters in Bern Switzerland was told that the financial crisis was having a profound affect on postal volumes particularly express mail volumes which were in serious decline. Peter Bakker from the Dutch TNT company told the forum that this was the first time in the 20 years of express mail growth that volumes had been falling. The Postmaster General of the USA, John Potter, said that the US was suffering heavy falls in mail volumes and no one knew if they would ever be the same again. He said that the USPS was looking for ways to reduce costs and to improve customer service and quality to attract customers. He urged the forum to make sure that they involved the unions and their members in the changes that were needed and to make sure they were able to contribute to the solutions.



Emmanuel van der Mensbrugghe, Director of the IMF in Europe, told the forum that the financial crisis had been the result of many things, not the least of which was the static income over several years of middle income earners and their decreasing levels of savings. He said that there must be a bolstering of demand and increases in consumption to lead the world out of recession. Neil Anderson, Head of UNI Post & Logistics Global Union, asking a question at the forum said this line of reasoning from the IMF was inconsistent with some of the statements at the forum where TNT’s Peter Bakker had made a provocative and unreal statement saying the industry needed lower wages!



Jean-Paul Bailly from La Poste France, said that even though mail volumes were dropping there were some opportunities for Post Offices, particularly in financial services where people no longer trusted the commercial banks but saw Post Offices as trusted government owned businesses who would perform solidly in this time of crisis. Talking of similar opportunities in the mail business, Chan Yau-fung, Postmaster General from Hong Kong Post said his company was seeing increasing volumes of packages which were offsetting falling domestic and express mail but where a new approach needed to be taken by management. He concluded by saying that the Chinese character for crisis was in fact two Chinese characters together, “wei” and “ji” which together signify “danger” and “opportunity”.



The UPU’s research and back ground document on the financial crisis and the postal industry can be found at; http://www.upu.int/postal_economics/en/the_global_economic_and_financial_crisis_en.pdf



The Conference proceedings can be viewed at; mms://wm.world-television.com/live_upu