News

A delegation of post and logistics unions will meet with the labour attaché at the German Embassy in Washington today to protest Deutsche Post DHL’s anti-union practices, specifically the use of illegal lie detector tests on employees.



The UNI Post & Logistics Global Union delegation will deliver a message to German Chancellor Angela Merkel protesting the DHL’s anti-union practices around the world and calling on the government to use its stake in the company to put a stop to such practices.



“We see a clear pattern at Deutsche Post DHL companies of using any tools at their disposal to keep their workforce non-union in as many countries as possible around the world,” said the Head of UNI Post & Logistics Neil Anderson. “In the US they are using a student visa scam in Pennsylvania to procure a vulnerable workforce that is low paid and unaware of their rights. In Colombia and other countries they use lie detector tests to isolate, intimidate and fire union activists.”



UNI Global Union is also backing strike action by several hundred foreign exchange students who, when they arrived in the United States, were sent to work at a Pennsylvania packing plant operated by Exel, a Deutsche Post DHL company, for Hershey, the chocolate giant. The students walked out in August, protesting low pay, physically exhausting work and large withholdings from their pay for rent and other costs. For most of them, the net pay isn’t even enough to cover the cost of their visas, which ranged from $3000 to $6000.



In Panama, Costa Rica, Colombia and South Africa, DHL is using lie detector tests to intimidate workers.



UNI Post & Logistics Global Union has condemned Deutsche Post DHL’s policy permitting the use of lie detectors in “exceptional circumstances”. During the UNI Post & Logistics Global Union World Conference, UNI passed a resolution calling for an end to this degrading and discredited practice.



“Lie detector testing has been outlawed by most law enforcement agencies around the world because it’s intrusive and an invasion of workers’ rights to privacy and dignity,” Anderson said. The ILO Code of Practice on the Protection of Workers’ Personal Data, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Global Compact all backed this stance.



Anderson called for action in the specific case of Edwin Velasquez Ayala, a Deutsche Post DHL worker in Bogota, Colombia. Velasquez Ayala was forced to take a lie detector test during an investigation into 22 missing USB sticks. During the test, he was asked personal questions about his family and personal life as well as intimidated by an aggressive former military officer of an external company hired by Deutsche Post DHL. Velasquez Ayala was pressured into signing a document stating that the test had never taken place. He was fired from his job with Deutsche Post DHL without any valid justification because he was suspected of stealing. No evidence of this theft was ever produced.



UNI is demanding that Deutsche Post DHL publicly commit to end its use of lie detector tests and reinstate Velasquez Ayala. It is also demanding that DHL’s Exel company follow through on its promise to stop using guest workers at its Hershey packaging plant and allow future employees there to organise and join a union.



UNI is running a joint campaign with the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) to demand that Deutsche Post DHL sign a global agreement guaranteeing union rights at its facilities around the world.