ConDems secret plans to privatise Post Offices

[goinpostal]

ConDems secret plans to privatise Post Offices
15 February 2011
from Privatisation and Cuts...Link the Fights!

The Tories and Lib Dems are happy to privatise Royal Mail – it boosts profits while bashing the strongly organised CWU postal union – but they are afraid to anger their Middle England base by being seen to privatise the Post Office. They witnessed, and in cases even supported, the wave of anger and protest at mass Post Office closures under Labour, when 6000 were shut.

However the Con Dem government has inherited a crisis in the popular post office network and even as they rush to reward their rich backers with privatisation, are worried about the fallout. They also want to avoid a potentially powerful alliance of Royal Mail workers fighting privatisation and the communities that rely on the Post Office.

That’s why the Coalition claims it will separate Post Office Ltd (POL) from Royal Mail and only privatise the latter. Business Secretary Vince Cable has even boasted “There will be no closures on our watch”. But this hides plans to take apart the Post Office bit by bit and set in motion a series of changes that inevitably involve cuts and whose end point is privatisation.

Post Office not safe under Tories
The Post Office under the Tories is not a great place for workers, as the current dispute shows where 5000 Crown Post Office staff are still being denied their 2010 pay claim, with management claiming they are “overpaid”. More attacks on jobs, wages and conditions are a certainty. But despite Cable’s boast, the ConDem plans will not save the Post Office from privatisation or cuts, quite the opposite despite their promises they clearly intend to do both.

The Post Office network has been in the red since 2000. In the past year alone, partly under the coalition government, over a thousand post offices have closed or been put up for sale, nearly a tenth. Meanwhile POL itself admits that 8000 post offices (out of 11,500) are not commercially viable. Radical measures would be needed to save the network but the Tories policy points in the other direction.

First off, separating off and privatising Royal Mail would mean an end to the Inter-Business Agreement that sees the company pay the Post Office £343 million a year in return for providing mail services, effectively subsidizing it. After five years the Postal Services Bill allows a private Royal Mail to end the contract and use other outlets rather than the post office network. The watchdog group Consumer Focus has predicted that Privatisation of the Royal Mail could result in 4400 post offices closing.

Vince Cable has also ruled setting up a postal bank which could boost income. This popular idea, proposed by the postal CWU union, has been vetoed by the ConDem’s millionaire backers in the City since it would compete with its banking monopolies. Instead the big banks will be allowed to develop services in conjunction with POL, using the network to make them more profits.

Cable has promised a four-year support package worth £1.34bn, more than the subsidy Post Offices get now but a temporary sweetener to get the ConDems through the next election. Their alternative plan to sustain the Post Office involves joint ventures with private companies for new services, putting post offices in shops of companies like WH Smith, and subsidies to help “big society” volunteers run services or staff create fake “co-ops”. These measures will make a big profit for the banks and companies involved, but will not be enough to stop closures of Post Offices in rural or poor areas in the longer term.

In addition to all this, the Postal Services Bill opens the possibility of turning POL into a “mutual” company like John Lewis, a “nice” form of privatisation that seems to put staff first not millionaire investors. But staff at John Lewis have little real say over the running of the business, which is overseen by six-figure salaried Directors, half of them appointed by the Chairman! And it would be a halfway house to a full, stock market sell-off as the post office crisis continued.

All these tricks and halfway measures show how nervous the Tories and LibDems are about being tagged as privatisers of popular public services like the Post Office or NHS. However the measures in the Postal Services Bill, put together, add up to privatising the Post Office piecemeal by the back door.

Universal Service under threat
Alongside the Tory shires’ anger at post office closures is the fear that a two-tiered system will arise where rural areas pay more for less service. In addition the Federation of Small Businesses has declared “There must be no more Post Office closures” and demands more not less post office services such as banking. Its members are strongly against cuts to the Universal Service Obligation, Royal Mail’s legal obligation to deliver to every address at the same stamp price, 6 days a week. The Coalition is concealing their plans for the USO too, claiming that they intend to defend the USO and what’s more, that Royal Mail privatisation is key to safeguarding it.

The opposite is true. Besides privatisation’s impact on POL, shown above, CWU General Secretary Billy Hayes claims there are fifteen separate clauses in the Bill which allow for the universal service to be “reviewed, undermined, and downgraded”, in particular allowing the new postal regulator Ofcom to review the universal service only 18 months after the bill passes!

The multinational TNT is one of the potential bidders for Royal Mail. In Holland it delivers only three times a week to unprofitable rural areas and stamp prices are twice those in Britain. Other firms that are lined up for the shares sale are ruthless private equity financiers that will slash and burn every barrier to fleecing the postal network of massive profits. Indeed last year’s Hooper Review into postal services last year raised cutting delivery days as a possibility.

Expose the Con Dem plans
The Tory and Lib Dem plans are to fool enough of the people enough of the time to avoid a crisis on this key issue. They hope to contain the opposition at their base among the middle class, small businesses, village homeowners and better off pensioners. Just like the ten percent of shares given to Royal Mail staff, which will no doubt end up in big shareholder hands within a few years, these figleafs are to hide privatisation’s pro-business nature from staff and the public. ConDem assurances on post offices and USO are not worth the paper they are printed on.

The Postal Services Bill will not resolve the crisis in the postal service, instead it will face a relentless round of cuts and privatisation. The aim is to orient the network towards the needs of business not the public, who will be given shoe-string services and price hikes. Anti-cuts campaigns, consumer groups and the CWU can mount a high-profile campaign to expose ConDem plans, and use the tensions and fallouts in the coalition’s base against them. After all sixty percent of the public oppose Royal Mail privatisation while only fifteen percent support according to an October You Gov poll. Even a majority of Tory voters are against it.

The aim of a campaign cannot be primarily to lose votes for the Coalition partners, which won’t stop privatisation here and now. Rather the real power in such a campaign is to neutralise Tory voters’ hostility to the workers movement, even to win sections of the middle classes to supporting the CWU when it takes the action that can stop privatisation – hard hitting strike action by Royal Mail and Post Office workers.

[Night Tonic]

Why does is not surprise me where that originated from

[fishtank]

Why does it not surprise me that you are more interested in the author than the content?

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Why does is not surprise me where that originated from

Well I would be surprised if you had been. Most intelligent people can tell what most articles are going to be like based on their origin.

For instance:
Daily Mail - rabid anti labour and anti multicultural.
Sun - frivolous and jingoistic.
Socialist Worker - Revolutionary and anti establishment.
Guardian - Socialist Libertarian
RM Courier - Everything is rosy in the cess pit.

Perhaps you are passing on a subliminal message.

[Night Tonic]

Me think you do protest too much.

[smokerjim]

Me think you do protest too much.

Really?

Why does is not surprise me where that originated from

Mr Kettle, may I introduce you to Mr Pot...?

[Segregate]

Hi.Could anybody explain to me why George Thomson (nfsp) went along with the bill.He certainly never won anything for the subbies,infact i think its the end for thousands.Cant get any answers on fed site.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Hi.Could anybody explain to me why George Thomson (nfsp) went along with the bill.He certainly never won anything for the subbies,infact i think its the end for thousands.Cant get any answers on fed site.

My subbie was asking that self same question today - apparently they got a letter suggesting that he should be sacked.

[subbie]

Sacked?

The only people within the Fed who are getting sacked are those who have dared question Mr Thomson, he has even kicked out the Unions Vice President so I have been told.

Something's not right.

Subbie

[POSTMAN]

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The above should be the cached version of part of the action for change site,they seem to change it on a daily basis...
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