Social dialogue

The ILO/UPU Regional Seminar on Social Dialogue in Postal Services in Africa, held in Bagamoyo, Tanzania, November 2006, brought together representatives of postal administrations, postal workers delegates and representatives of public and private employers from Southern and Eastern Africa.

The conclusions (pdf, 356k) of the meeting are available here.

Social dialogue at the European level in this sector has made significant progress recently. Notable among such developments is the Guidelines for Customer Contact Centres (pdf, 84k) that was negotiated in the Telecommunications Dialogue Committee and the launching of a website of the European Social Dialogue Committee of the Postal Sector. Global framework agreements (that include reference to several ILO Conventions) have now been signed between workers' organizations and their employers at Telefónica (Spain, 2000), OTE Telecom (Greece, 2001), Portugal Telecom (2006) and France Télécom (2006). Meanwhile, in the postal industry, the Universal Postal Union (UPU) and Union Network International (UNI) signed a cooperation agreement in 2005, to promote social dialogue aimed at the sustainable development of postal services at the international level.

Workers involved in the process of technological and structural change in communications services need to be well informed about those changes. They often need to accept the corporate strategy developed by their management, although not necessarily agreeing with corporate policies in general. Some trade unions are given access to a considerable amount of "commercially sensitive" information that is not publicly available, but many companies are still reluctant to release information to trade unions, even when such information is indispensable for workers' organizations to consider their own strategic planning.

Workers and their organizations in the postal and telecommunications services should be informed of the strategic decisions of operators, and their views should be taken into account particularly in relation to human resources issues. They should be involved at all appropriate levels of the restructuring process if the reforms are to fully achieve their objectives of efficient and quality service. The process of restructuring must not undermine existing collective bargaining arrangements.

Useful links/resources

• European Industrial Relations Observatory On-line - Information on the Post and Telecommunications sector