Privatisation is dear to the hearts of many. There is a constant refrain that competition is good and public service is bad, and I sometimes have the impression that this is a ,matter faith. The facts, as I experience them, do not support this view. To me everything that has been privatised has got worse: but then I am not a shareholder, and the shareholder view is the only one that counts.
The Royal Mail in the UK has not been privatised.....yet. It has suffered from the introduction of corporate-think in the same way as many public services (think "internal markets") but it has not been actually privatised. Not that it wasn't attempted: but we need a little more softening up.
This article
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/apr/29/m...-class-delivery from the Guardian of 29/4/11 is instructive. But it is particularly interesting to compare the situation described with the TNT "mission and vision".
www.tntpost.com/tntpost/mission_vision/index.aspI have been wondering why people write mission statements: it is not like anyone believes them. They are patronising, and they are annoying. But they must do something because money is spent on this. It is interesting to read the comments below the Guardian article: admittedly these are presumably Guardian readers and they are said to be lefties. But I don't think they are leftie in any sense I can understand: more decent old fashioned liberal people, perhaps.
It is perfectly plain that the "mission and vision" is a series of outright lies coupled with hurrah words. But the company does not appear to have any idea at all what a postal service is for: they think it for making profit. Well so it is but there is a hole in that sentence. It is for making profit from delivering the mail. They seem to have forgotten the second clause.
Many of the people who champion privatisation are sincere, I assume. Useful idiots, but of the right. They make a fundamental error: they take for granted that which is good, and assume it will be sustained if they change all the rest. And to some extent they are right. Ordinary postmen and women are like ordinary teachers and ordinary public servants in general: indeed like ordinary workers most places. They work around. When they don't have the machinery because of lack of investment they try to work around. When they don't have full staff they set the priorities in line with what the company or the service is supposed to do: and they work around. That can last a long time and it can do a great deal. But it cannot go on forever, and talk of "efficiency" savings is just laughable after years of them. Yet still we are told there is a lot of waste. Well so there is. It is wasteful not to buy in machinery which makes the job easier and quicker - which the article refers to. Public sector workers know this and they know the money comes from the public purse: they have always accepted poor working conditions precisely because they understand this. So they work around.
But what is proposed here strikes me as the same as living in a very poorly looked after house for years and years: then the landlord comes and does it up to a great house: and turfs you out and sells it.
The poor know what "outworking" means. It has a history which goes back to the industrial revolution and perhaps beyond. It means you cannot earn a living wage in a reasonable time and you have no protection whatsoever. Back to the future indeed. Did someone mention Victorian Values?
