Unions call for rethink of Europes postal liberalisation

UNI Post & Logistics is holding a conference in Budapest, Hungary to discuss the ongoing liberalisation of the postal market in Europe and particularly the effects of liberalisation on the countries in Eastern Europe.

UNI Post & Logistics is holding a conference in Budapest, Hungary to discuss the ongoing liberalisation of the postal market in Europe and particularly the effects of liberalisation on the countries in Eastern Europe.

Representatives from unions met with the CEO of Magyar Post, Ildikó Szüts, one of Hungary’s MEP’s Zita Gurmai, and the World President of UNI Post & Logistics, Rolf Buttner. The UNI -Europa Post & Logistics Steering Group is attending the meeting also to help with their experience of liberalised markets and to see how these unions can be assisted in their struggle to ensure that liberalisation does not destroy jobs.

Rolf Buttner in replying to the presentations of the Hungarian Ministry and Zita Gurmai, said it is time the European Community recognised the dramatic affects on the postal industry of the World’s economic crisis and started to rethink the headlong rush into freeing up postal markets. He said the economic crisis was showing falling mail volumes and dramatic changes to the postal market and it didn’t make sense any more to just blindly follow a liberalisation regime decided in very different economic times. UNI Post & Logistics asked that the European Parliament and the European Commission take very careful note of what was happening and of the presentations being made by all of the Eastern European union representatives present that liberalisation in the current economic climate would only lead to poorer quality of service, higher unemployment and social dumping.