News

The World Meeting of UNI Post & Logistics was held in Nyon July 22 -23. Participants agreed a new strategic direction for the sector. Discussions about a strategic plan for the sector with goals and commitments for the UN Secretariat and UNI Post & Logistics affiliates, had been ongoing and were culminated at the World Meeting where UNI and affiliates made commitments together about how they would move the Strategic Plan forward. (The agreed plan is attached).



The participants also took part in a very lively and informative meeting where discussions included the relations with the UPU and how to move that relationship forward. One area of UPU cooperation that was agreed, was that UNI will work with the UPU to develop a plan of action to promote and encourage the use of the UPU’s remittances system (IFS) both to ensure decent work for postal workers but also to benefit the many millions of UNI members who are migrant workers and who are sending money back to their home country. UNI Head of Post & Logistics, Neil Anderson, told the meeting that UNI wants to see a safe and affordable system so that the money being remitted is getting directly into the hands of the people who it is being sent to help. UNI will be asking all affiliates to urge their governments to sign on and encourage postal operators in their countries to be part of the IFS system.



Stuart Howard, ITF Deputy General Secretary and Eddie Dickson from the Road Transport Sector of the ITF made presentations to the meeting on developing better UNI and ITF relations particularly in respect of the joint work that must be done to organise the workers in the global delivery industry. Participants said that a merger of the two Global Unions should be the ultimate aim so that workers in this industry can have a united strong voice to face the challenges of the new postal operators and the changes the industry was facing and to meet head on the challenge of organsing workers in global delivery multinationbals.



Liberalisation was one of the main issues under discussion and presentations were made by a number of participants including; The situation in Argentina where the Post had been totally deregulated and privatised with disastrous consequences; The development of competition in the UK with the result that the Royal Mail is struggling to be able to provide a sustainable universal service; The privatisation of Japan Post; and a study that has been undertaken in Switzerland where a number of different scenarios were provided to the Government and the Swiss union's action to oppose liberalisation.



A campaign plan for organising the Deutsche Post World Net /DHL group of companies was discussed and plans made to move with the ITF to organise more workers globally in this company.



Delegates were also urged to make an approach to their Governments to seek assurances about how they were approaching the services discussions at the WTO where the Post & Logistics services are up for discussion.



The meeting also discussed other issues such as a research project UNI will be doing on liberalisation, UNI's communications packageand it included presentations by Esther Bares, UNI Post & Logistic's Research Assistant , on the DHL and Regulation forums that have been started on the UNI Post & Logistics web page.



All the documents and presentations from the meeting can be found at;

http://www.union-network.org/unipostal.nsf/Meetings?openpage