Comment: 'Privatising the Royal Mail is a bad idea'

[Broxi51]

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/blogs/dontpani ... p2529.html


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Comment: ‘Privatising the Royal Mail is a bad idea'
Sat Sep 18 07:00AM .
By Joe Wade

Last week Vince Cable signalled the Coalition was going to implement full privatisation of the Royal Mail, which instantly made me draw parallels with the fate of railways (more about that here). Like the trains, the postal service seems to be a natural monopoly, where the cost is so high to create a network, like water pipes, that there really is only one supplier. I mean, can genuine competition exist when posting a letter, turning on the tap or buying a train ticket?

If trains are anything to go by I'd say no and please leave our natural monopolies alone because either I've got early onset dementia or booking train tickets has got really confusing. Why is it sometimes cheaper to travel first class than standard and why do the machines cough out about 15 different old school BR tickets/seat reservations which must all be crammed into your wallet or they will fine the life out of you? Well, now imagine posting a letter - there would be loads of different post boxes crowding the pavement, each one requiring a different stamp (second class will be more expensive sometimes of course) which will only take your letter up to Crewe before it will need to change services.

Natural monopolies seem like public provisions or service providers rather than businesses. Much like operating a train service to remote parts of the country, it is impossible to turn a profit from delivering letters to the Orkneys. Luckily these parts of the operation can be subsidised by the postal equivalent of the London to Birmingham cash cow express. Dave ‘classic union name' Ward of The Communication Workers Union claims that the Labour government's attempt to liberalise postal services allowed private companies to take 60% of Royal Mail's profitable business, thereby reducing the funds available to ensure Grandma's annual birthday cheque makes your letterbox for less than a packet of crisps, a service that the Royal Mail is obliged to fulfill due to the universal service obligation.

‘If it ain't broke don't fix it' is probably not a phrase you'd apply to the Royal Mail. Back in 2006 it admitted that it had lost or pinched 14.6 million letters, and anyone unlucky enough to have been a victim will know what it's like when you try and complain. I always imagine them putting you on speaker phone and all miming along with what you're saying before issuing a witheringly jobs-worth and soul-destroying put-down. You have to hope that your parcel ends up in a good-ish home and just let it go.
‘Dispatches' on Channel Four made an undercover documentary in February this year that demonstrated that, despite significant improvements in delivery rates, problems still existed in the organisation; many of which stem from an over-reliance on temporary staff, who don't know the postal routes and have no real incentive to learn. Privatisation is supposed to solve this problem and fund the Royal Mail's £8bn pension deficit.

It's seductively simple but also undeniably false to believe this approach will deliver the postal service we deserve for the same sort of money we pay to post stuff now. I'm paraphrasing the recently departed historian Tony Judt here as he makes some great arguments as to why most privatisations result in a royal shafting for the taxpayer, even before you start wondering which colour of post box you're meant to be using for the monthly Swansea service.

The private sector is supposed to be super smart and so, if the Royal Mail is the disaster the Coalition makes it out to be, private suitors are hardly going to be paying top dollar. In fact if they are serious shouldn't they start talking about the Post Office's south-facing garden and how it's only had one previous owner? Well they can't, they basically tell the public they have a right old banger on their hands and so the only option is to send it to the bargain basement.

Over to you Tony: "...when the state sells cheap, the public takes a loss. In the course of the Thatcher-era UK privatisations, the deliberately low price at which public assets were marketed to the private sector resulted in a transfer of £14 billion from the taxpaying public to stockholders. To this loss should be added a further £3 billion in fees to the banks that transacted the privatisations. The state paid the private sector some £17 billion to facilitate the sale of assets for which there would otherwise have been no takers."

The Royal Mail is a natural monopoly which provides a universal service at a low cost and, while it has problems, a sell-off will inevitably result in price rises and a down-grading of the service. Assets will be undervalued to lure in hard-headed corporations who will strip out and sell the juicy bits (like expensive real estate) and us muggins will still be liable for losses because an organisation like the Royal Mail is simply too big to fail.

[Broxi51]

There are a lot of supportive comments after the article on the website

[Sharkeyes]

PRIVATISATION - MODERNISATION -
They all mean one thing to ROYAL MAIL and a way of life for us and those before us who would be consigned to the history books forever if this is ever allowed to happen. All this means is that some very wealthy people will become even more wealthier at the expense of you, me and every other poor sod who gets up at un godly hours, works in all kinds of weathers, carrying all kinds of crap for competitors, while watching our own service die an undignified death at the hands of faceless politicians, who are guilty of being reckless with OUR ROYAL MAIL! while colluding with bureaucrats in Brussells on how best to carve it up and share out the proffits, most of which will go abroad.
IT'S OUR ROYAL MAIL!, not theirs. It belongs to you and me and worked well until the EU started wrecking it by proxy!
We must fight this to the bitter end! 'Employee agenda, the way forward' they were all smoke screens for what is happening now, but its not too late to stop this political madness of the mad hatters tea party.
PRIVATISATION IS A BAD IDEA, all round. The only winners will be foreign companies waiting in the wings to take over Royal Mails assets, sites and work force. They inturn will do away with everything that the CWU has fought for. You will be working for the minimum wage on part time hours. Private agencies will supply cheap foreign EU labour to carry out deliveries,Distribution drivers will have to workfor an agency on different rates & conditions as this work would out sourced to the lowest tender. As for processing, this will be most likely to be done in a few regional centers that will be run by another private firm employing yes you guessed it, their own cheaper foreign workforce.
'NO THIS ISN'T FANTASY! THIS IS IN 12 MONTHS TIME!' Be afraid, be very afraid! As for RM managers, there won't be any! Companies will bring in their own, who are 'yes men'. They will be the supreme autocrats of the work place. They will live and breathe the company values and woe betide anyone who dares to stand up and object!......'close the door on your way out!'

[borders]

spot on sharkeyes, but thats Capitalism for you. the middlemen brokering the deals making a nice few quid , the people at the top table making a nice few quid , the shareholders making a nice few quid off the backs of the workers etc .
all set up by our politicians whether yellow ,red or blue , who are then given a seat on the board in an " Advisory " capacity so they can make a nice few quid.
for F--ks sake people wake up , we are being mugged off but hey what do i know i am just a stupid militant ........





s**t , i have just checked, F--k RM is just about the last big Public service that hasnt been sold off to some private foreign firm .
who owns the railways , utilities , big industries like BP , car making plants , insurance firms etc then ? .......


were too late

[borders]

sharkeyes, here is an interesting article---


We must face up to divisive challenges
Tuesday 21 September 2010Linda Kaucher . Most workers will recognise that corporations have been rapidly exporting manufacturing and services work to cheaper labour areas.

At the same time these businesses' ability to move workers across borders represents a major capitalist strategy to undermine labour standards, wages and workers' power in the few places, such as Britain, where they exist as a result of struggle and limited labour supply.

However the much-needed debate on this key capitalist strategy and on the "regulations" being formulated to push it through remains limited. This debate is frequently silenced by a left that seems reluctant to face up to reality.

Along with Labour references to jobs and the need to create jobs, alongside Con-Dem talk of cuts, proposals for how to deal with this means of undermining labour - or even an acknowledgement that these factors exist - are entirely absent. This is despite the obvious detrimental effect of local workers' displacement to the "national economy," which is generally central to the debate.

The mechanisms which enable firms to capitalise on wage differences between workers, resulting in the displacement of Britain's workers, are enshrined at national level, within the EU and in the European bloc's external trade commitments.

Britain's points-based system for migrants enables transnational firms to bring in their own "intracorporate transferees" from outside the EU. This applies wherever a transnational firm has invested in an existing business in Britain or has an established base here.

And, as recession cuts bite, outsourcing firms using migrant labour are likely to become commonplace. Local workers will be displaced on a massive scale.

India-based giant Tata, for instance, is the biggest owner of manufacturing in Britain. RBS sacked hundreds of British workers last week, but it is also established in India and could replace them with Indian workers.

Internally within the EU not only does free movement of labour allow individual workers to come and work in Britain but free movement of services allows firms within the EU to bring in their own "posted workers" in order to "fulfil service contracts" in other member states.

The engineering construction industry has felt and continues to feel the sharp end of free movement of services within the EU, leaving many workers unemployed across the country despite there being work locally.

And the definition of work itself has changed. Most sectors are now classed as "services," including collecting rubbish, and the construction, IT and sex industries.

The "services" label is much more about a shift from real, solid jobs to contracting-out and less secure conditions than it is about the actual nature of the work.

By redefining sectors in this way the legal mechanisms formulated for "services" can be employed in the cross-border movement of workers to increase profits.

The same phenomenon is taking place within international trade agreements. These now include a major component called Mode 4, which allows transnational corporations to move workers across borders from outside the EU.

An EU-India free trade agreement is currently being fast-tracked. Labour access is the Indian government's central demand, though this has not been revealed publicly. Once formal trade agreement commitments are made, however, they are beyond national adjustment. They are effectively irreversible.

Con-Dem government statements on an immigration "cap" need to be seen in this context. Britain's points-based system and the coalition's cap plans are actually designed to dovetail with Mode 4 commitments enshrined within EU trade agreements.

The Con-Dem cap is a con in itself, nothing more than political spin to allay public concerns both of excessive permanent migration and separate concerns over labour migration. It successfully confuses the two and addresses neither.

In a 2009 report the Migration Advisory Committee, which is currently assisting with the Con-Dem proposals, looked at labour migration and acknowledged that trade commitments took precedent over national policy-making. Corporate gains from labour migration and Britain's Mode 4 commitments as an EU member state must not be impeded, it seems, by national regulation.

Consultation over the Con-Dem cap is just window dressing. Intracorporate transferees will still be excluded, as they have been from the interim cap, so that national policy does not interfere with the trade commitments the EU is making on our behalf. Britain's workers will have no protection from the corporate onslaught of cheap labour.

The cap that has been spun as a limiting mechanism will actually secure forever corporations' rights to profit from moving workers across borders.

But if the Con-Dem cap is a sham without credibility, where is the authentic debate and action among those who assume the mantle of defending and maintaining workers' rights?

Until these offensives are openly and critically debated workers will remain unable to meet the challenge and defend themselves. The longer this debate is silenced the less chance there is of beating the threat.