Labour news from UNI global union
An extraordinary meeting of UNI Post & Logistics global union has given the go ahead to step up campaigning across the sector. A key target is DHL.
A global alliance of DHL trade unions is being launched to build union membership and to win a global agreement that recognises labour rights wherever DHL operates around the world.
UNI – which already has DHL organising projects in Hong Kong and Latin America – will direct the campaign and help develop the research on which specific activities will be based. Verdi, which is the home union for Deutsche Post, will also play a key role.
It was agreed to set up a Steering Group to oversee the campaign that will also lay the foundations for future campaigns in other post and logistic multinationals.
The meeting agreed to step up cooperation with the International Transport Workers Federation as boundaries between postal operators and transport/logistics giants become increasingly blurred with de-regulation of postal services well underway in Europe and Japan.
Meeting advisor Paul Goulter with Post & Logistics President Rolf Büttner
UNI Post & Logistics is to set up a UNI Regulation Watch to assist affiliates in challenging the increasingly political decisions of postal regulators.
Many of their decisions determine how effective protection will be for the universal postal service, on which communities and jobs depend. Unions will have to become increasingly nimble as new and often-small private operators increasingly employ workers in the sector.
Unions are to be encouraged to help develop new services in the traditional postal operators – like delivering remittance money across the world for migrant workers to support families back home. The aim is to challenge the growing trend by governments under a political agenda to cut back the activities of traditional operators and allow outside private companies to cherry pick their services.
In Europe protection for traditional postal operators will disappear from 2011/13 as a result of a decision by the European Union while Japan Post is already in a ten-year process of division and privatisation.
“Europe has come up with a rotten piece of legislation,” UNI General Secretary Philip Jennings told the meeting in Nyon, Switzerland. “The EU has washed its hands of protecting the postal service and we have to help national trade unions defend this key service to the public.”
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