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After fifteen years of market-opening the balance sheet of post liberalization is overwhelmingly negative, says a report by FORBA commissioned by UNI Europa Post&Logistics.

In 2013, a fifteen year process of the liberalization of postal services in the European Union came to a preliminary end as the last member states abolished the remaining sections of the national post monopolies

Declining Services, Increasing Prices

With few exceptions, the new competitors emerging from the liberalized market never opened post offices or installed letter boxes. Instead they pick-up mail directly at the premises of their mostly large corporate customers. As for mail delivery, they typically deliver only two or three days a week and only in highly populated areas.

Prices for large customers such as banks, telephone companies and online retailers have decreased – not least because they can negotiate individual price rebates. But standard mail costs have increased in a number of countries.

The Deterioration in Working Conditions in Postal Services: wage and employment cuts, large increase of part-time contracts, prevalence of outsourcing and self-employed workers and a fragmentation of industrial relations

Liberalization was accompanied by a substantial cut of postal sector employment. With very few exceptions, former national post companies have reduced employment since 1998. In some cases, the job cuts amount to as much as 40 per cent to 50 per cent, typically they account for between 20 per cent and 30 per cent. Contrary to the European Commission’s prediction, these job cuts were not offset by the resulting growth in employment among new market entrants. This is the case even in the few countries where the new competitors have acquired market shares of more than 10 per cent.

While cutting overall job numbers, former national post companies have increased the proportion of part-time workers. However, part-time work is even more widespread among the new competitors.

Spread of Precarious Self-Employed due to Outsourcing

While in some countries the new competitors mainly rely on part-time staff, in others they predominantly deploy self-employed postal deliverers. In both cases, the use of atypical employment is part of the competitors’ low-cost strategy

Self-employment is particularly widespread in the parcel and express service industry. Even though there is a lack of country-wide data, case studies suggest that a large part of the delivery activities are carried out by self-employed drivers paid by piece rates. Here self-employment is the result of an outsourcing chain in which the global players, and increasingly also the former national post companies, contract so-called service partners for delivery activities who, in turn, hire self-employed drivers to carry out the delivery tasks.

Liberalization, together with the introduction of new surveillance technology, has led to a far-reaching deterioration of working conditions caused by an extension of delivery routes, or by under-staffing in post offices and sorting centres. Working conditions are even worse in the parcel and express service industry: here self-employed deliverers not only suffer from permanent work pressure and the need to cope with unforeseen difficulties but also from long working hours of up to 15 hours per day.

This deterioration of postal-sector employment and working conditions has been underpinned by a fragmentation of industrial relations, weighing on the power of workers and unions.

Few winners and many losers

In most regards, the liberalization of postal services did not bring about the results promised by the EU and the privatizers: postal services declined for citizens, while privatized business service delivery expanded, producing a few winners and many losers. The European postal service privatization process has been, however, very successful in reducing labour costs and in turning what used to be a reservoir of stable and decent jobs, especially for low-skilled workers, into an area of precarious and low-waged work.

The winners are private shareholders of former public monopolies, post managers and large customers, while the losers include private households, especially those in rural areas, and postal sector workers who have experienced liberalization as massive deterioration of employment and working conditions.

For the full article by Christopher Hermann of FORBA, see   http://www.globalresearch.ca/deregulating-and-privatizing-postal-service...