AUTHOR: Redaspie DATE: Thursday, August 31, 2006 ----- BODY:
Actually the title of this one has nothing to do with this article, really, apart from the fact that it's about a postal worker. But I have an obsessive love of crappy jokes and by god I'm gonna use 'em!

Some time ago I blogged about the intention by Royal Mail to franchise out crown Post Offices to the bookseller WH Smith. Fortunately, there are real signs of a fightback, with protests against this being held across England and Wales and a planned ballot for industrial action on the cards. This issue is part of a wider story, involving the opening up of Britain's postal market to competition, including competition from postal companies based in other countries. CWU general secretary Billy Hayes wrote quite a good article on the consequences of this a few months ago. Hayes is an old-fashioned Labour soft-left type, and not entirely opposed to commercialisation of public services, but nonetheless the article is worth reading. This bit in particular is worth highlighting:

"The effect of allowing private operators to cherry-pick profitable contracts
without any "social" obligation will be to cut Royal Mail's income. This will
see the company looking to replace the subsidy it in effect received from the
profitable side of the business by raising stamp prices and cutting the
workforce. As Royal Mail loses market share to entrants that do not have to bear
the fixed costs of providing a universal service, its revenues will shrink
relative to its costs. Royal Mail will have to support the same infrastructure
of mail-distribution centres and delivery vans, and its only option will be to
cut costs."


As Hayes says, this is the result of business mail being the profitable part of the service, and therefore the part that subsidises the more important part of the postal service - the delivery of ordinary letters and parcels. And his predictions of Royal Mail seeking to cut costs by cutting the workforce is coming to pass, as this article off the Socialist Party's website shows. The franchising out of mail delivery to a private bookseller is but a small part of this process, one designed to destroy the idea of a publicly-owned universal postal service and replace it with a free market free-for-all in which the universal service becomes gradually undermined. As a result of the policies being implemented, there is growing anger and resistance among postal workers.

Apart from cutting the workforce and attacking their pay and conditions, the Royal Mail is also attempting to find income from other sources. And this leads on the story of Roger Annies, which illustrates both the current rebellious mood of many postal workers and the sheer lunacy of privatisation as a process. Mr Annies decided to give his customers a leaflet he had himself designed in order to inform them about Royal Mail's internal 'opting-out' procedure whereby customers can fill out a slip advising Royal Mail that they do not want junk mail delivered to their door. This was unsurprisingly a popular service for the customers in the South Wales area where Roger Annies works - junk mail is in most cases a complete waste of time and frequently annoying for many. However, as Annies notes in his leaflet, Royal Mail is planning to "increase your advertising mail". The reason is very simple - Royal Mail makes a great deal of money out of having contracts with firms to deliver unwanted and unaddressed mail, the postal equivalent of cold calling, to residents.

And it was because of this reason that Roger Annies has been suspended from his job for "alleged misconduct" i.e. giving his customers a popular service by telling them about Royal Mail's policies, something the Mail should be doing themselves anyway. But of course, because the Mail needs to make cash due to the opening up of postal services, it is in their interest to not tell their customers how to opt out of getting junk mail. And that, comrades, is how barmy, and how contrary to the basic concept of public service, privatisation actually is.

UPDATEE: It turns out that the opt-out on junk mail offered by the Royal Mail actually only lasts for one year, thus necessitating constant annual renewal. Something else that they don't advertise... See here for more details. Scroll down to the comments.
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