News

Representatives from postal trade unions from Croatia, Macedonia, Austria, Serbia, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Germany and Hungary met last week in Budapest in their annual Borderland meeting to discuss the future of trade union cooperation and postal services in their region.

Unions exchanged views on how they coordinate activity and increase future cooperation. The main topic of the conference was the situation of universal services in the different countries, with special regard to its appearance in national law and its content. Unions were particularly concerned because the European postal legislation provides a legal framework only for universal services, which must be adopted and conferred on Member States’ national legislation.

Participants at the meeting emphasized that high quality, universally-accessible services can only be maintained with high-quality jobs with good working conditions and equitable wages in the postal sector.

Participants found it to be important to underline that a suitably developed and regulated compensation fund needs to be able to compensate losses of universal service provider connected with provision of universal services.

Participants believe that development of new postal services, introduction of new technologies, innovative and technologically advanced postal services can contribute to maintenance and increase of jobs in postal sector, as well as to improvement of universal services.